Back Bay train collision 29 years later

[Music] thanks to those that GoFundMe for making videos like this one possible more on that at the end of the video [Music] December 11th 1990 Amtrak train 66 the night L departs Washington's Union Station found four Boston the night al was a part of Amtrak's overnight service in the Northeast Corridor was supposed to arrive at Boston the next morning on December 12th at 8:35 a.m. the Train is led by an a em7 however at the time electrification ended at New Haven Connecticut so once the train arrived in New Haven the am7 is swamped with two f40 ph's number 272 and 366 to continue the journey to Boston behind the engines were a material handling car a baggage car 3m fleet coaches a dining car two sleepers another baggage and another material handling card the train had a crew of seven and a hundred and nine passengers on board with engineer Willis a Copeland an apprentice engineer Richard Abramson in the lead locomotive Abramson is in the engineer seat driving the f40 s but is doing so under the supervision of Copeland who's been a railroad veteran since 1957 became an engineer in 1969 as well as a road Foreman a joined Amtrak in 1976 and has been with them ever since Abramson was hired by Amtrak in 1973 as a ticket clerk but joined the engineer training program in early 1990 he's hoping for promotion sometime down the road as he made two round trips between New Haven and Boston earlier in the month meanwhile MBTA commuter train 906 was running on the Stoughton line running from Stoughton to Boston consisting of a cab car and six coaches with f40 pH - to see 1073 pushing the Train at the rear with over 900 passengers and a crew of five a departments ruggles station at 8:20 a.m. both trains began there approached the Back Bay station a scheduled stop for both trains the Western approach was a three track tunnel with the MBTA on track one and the Amtrak on track two the tracks are immediately adjacent to one another with no barriers between them the speed limit for the approach was 30 miles an hour the MBTA followed the speed limit however the Amtrak was the train had started its breaking at Ruggles station but as they entered the tunnel Copeland began to realize that they weren't slowing down fast enough they entered the tunnel at 76 miles an hour more than twice the authorized speed as the MBTA commuter comes into view Copeland reaches over to slam the emergency brakes it was already too little too late to prevent the inevitable the Amtrak locomotives tip over and slam into the MBTA train MBTA 1073 is pinned against a support column of the tunnel crushed while the Amtrak locomotives lay battered on their side with severe frame damage the collision caused the trains to jackknife and not only damaged support columns but create a hole in the middle of Dartmouth Street above rescuers immediately respond and arrived on the scene in less than a minute since the accident occurred in downtown Boston West skiers feared many were dead or severely injured but amazingly not a single person was killed but 453 people did sustained injuries including the engineer and apprentice engineer of the Amtrak train the total cost of the damages were over 14 million dollars both Amtrak locomotives the MBTA locomotive five Amtrak coaches and one MBTA coach were written off and scrapped Back Bay was closed for six days as it took a very long time to clean up the mess but what could cause such a disaster but with the Amtrak crew thinking [Music] an investigation was launched by the NTSB who spected something wasn't right about the Amtrak crew they found that Copeland who was the engineer that was training the apprentice Abramson was a bad role model he was in the railroad business since 1957 and was promoted to engineer in 1969 as mentioned before surely such experience doesn't mean he's bad right well in 1979 just a couple years after being hired by Amtrak he had ran several stop signals and at one point almost caused a train to plunge into an open drawbridge Appel Ham Bay New York almost a repeat of the Newark Bay Bridge disaster in 1958 only an automatic derail prevented disaster after that incident Copeland was fired both later rehired by Amtrak in 1983 the data recorder inside the Amtrak train revealed the train was going beyond the speed limit going over a hundred miles an hour to make up for lost time between New Haven and Boston as the train was delayed Copeland claimed he told Abramson to start breaking at ruggles station but the davidic order said otherwise even if the night owl' did start breaking at Ruggles it was going way too fast and wouldn't slow down to a safe speed like 50 miles an hour before entering the curve simulations concluded that any speed over 60 miles an hour would immense certain doomed which is exactly what happened here as by the time the train started braking as it entered the tunnel it was going 76 miles an hour before tipping over and colliding with the MBTA to make matters worse there was more to Copeland's bad record early in March of 1990 he was banned from running on Metro North territory between New Haven and New Rochelle New York for his previous violations of operating rules including his near disaster in 79 so it put it simply you shouldn't even been the night owl in the first place that night in the end the NTSB pointed the finger at the Amtrak crew as Copeland was not supervising Abramson properly and that Abramson had a lack of experience as he was learning the New Haven to Boston route like physical characteristics of the line while learning how to operate the locomotive itself at the same time good way to learn how to drive also look a mode of engineers who were to supervise apprentices did not receive special training or instruction for that task the NTSB raised particular concerns about Copeland serving in this role given his service record as pairing an inexperienced apprentice with an engineer with a very spotty record was just a recipe for disaster Amtrak fired both Copeland and Abramson after the accident and in 1992 two years later Amtrak had installed automatic warning devices which would warn a train as it was approaching a curve too fast similar accidents like Back Bay however still occurred years later such as the frankfort junction collision in 2015 but with positive train control being implemented on American railroads across the country it's hopeful that 29 years later such incidents never occur again I offer so many different kinds of content on my channel trainwreck documentaries and Joe septa NS inceptive Norristown and plenty of other railfan videos in the philadelphia area but with YouTube D monetizing most of my documentaries it's hard to balance out video making with real life as most of my earned money is spent on such things like food gas etc if you want to help make more videos like this possible please check out my GoFundMe page down below for any and all donations big and small will help keep this channel going be sure to check out patreon as well where if you join one of two tiers you will get access to sneak previews railfan trips and more there's also my discord server where you can get news on new videos and chat with hundreds of fans just like you I also have a deviantART where I sell prints of my photos and even my merch store down below is slowly growing with more designs in the works I even have a new Facebook page where you can know about locations I'm going to and you came in here and share some stuff to me on the page anyway that's all for now see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Thunderbolt 1000 Siren Productions

Views: 503,836

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Id: XePkYq2Ai_g

Length: 11min 23sec (683 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2019