The configuration of southbound Metrolink train 100, which had a locomotive pushing passenger cars from the rear rather pulling them from the front, may have contributed to the severity of Wednesday's deadly derailment, according to transportation safety experts.
Trains pushed along the tracks generally have lighter, less sturdy passenger cars in front, which experts say have a greater chance of sustaining damage during a collision and are more likely to derail. The configuration also puts more people closer to the point of impact, placing a carful of passengers rather than an engine with the train's crew at the front.
The train that slammed into a Jeep Cherokee outside the Glendale station Wednesday was being pushed by a 140-ton locomotive and was led by a modified passenger car, known as a cab car, that weighed 56 tons.
"There is no question you are safer when the engine is pulling the train," said Loren Joplin, who worked as an accident and safety official for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co. in the 1970s. "For years, I have thought that using engines to push trains was going to end in a disaster. Had there been a locomotive on the front end, this would not have happened in Glendale."
Timothy L. Smith, who chairs the California legislative board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said union officials had been concerned about cab car safety for years.
Smith said the union had lodged formal written complaints about the issue with Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration, but nothing was done.
Not everyone, however, agrees that the placement of the train's engine is a significant safety issue.
Whether a locomotive is in the front or the rear of a train makes little difference in a crash, said George Elsmore, program manager at the California Public Utilities Commission's rail safety division.
Passenger cabs are reinforced to help withstand crashes, and both cabs and locomotives are outfitted with bumper-like devices meant to push cars and debris from the path of a train, "like a snow plow," he said.
Warren Flatau, a spokesman for Federal Railroad Administration, said "the evidence is not conclusive" on whether locomotives positioned in the rear are less safe than ones pulling from the front. But, he said, "there are clearly situations where, with on-track obstructions, a heavier locomotive might" be safer.
