Accident Report Detail

About 4:10 p.m., on March 17, 1983, after receiving a clear signal indicating a clear main track route, Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Company train No. 103, entered a misaligned track switch leading from the main track to an interchange track and collided with standing freight cars on the interchange track. A signal maintainer was working on the switch circuit controller, and had disconnected the shunt wires while working at that location. The engineer of train No. 103 received serious injuries, and the fireman and brakeman received minor injuries. Damage was estimated to be about $2,443,295.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause of this accident was the display of a false proceed aspect at the entrance to a signal block in which a track switch had been left misaligned by a signal maintainer, who was working at that location. Contributing to the accident were the use of a track shunt circuit protection system not designed on the closed-circuit principle and a lack of procedural instruction to and supervision of the relatively inexperienced signal maintainer.