COLUMBIA, S.C. – Federal railroad investigators and others looking into the deadly Graniteville train wreck are tight-lipped about the actions of a train crew who some experts say likely are at the center of the investigation.

The National Transportation Safety Board, the lead investigating agency, has interviewed the three-member Norfolk Southern crew who parked a freight train on a side track next to Avondale Mills the night before the crash.

But the agency has declined to identify the conductor, engineer or brakeman, or say what they have told investigators. Transcripts of the interviews might be made public before the investigation is completed, but that probably would be months away, said NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway.

“We never comment on details or what we were told,” Holloway said. The investigation could take more than a year, he said.

Steve Seeling says he is willing to wait for answers.

He is the father of Christopher Seeling, 28, of West Columbia, the Norfolk Southern engineer who died when his 42-car freight train slammed into the two-car parked train about 2:40 a.m. Jan. 6.

The crash killed eight others – including six Avondale Mills workers – injured 234 and caused the evacuation of more than 5,000 residents after tons of chlorine liquid leaked from one of the 14 derailed cars of the moving train.

“I just want to know what actually happened,” Seeling’s father said. “I just want investigators to have the freedom to do their job and do it right.”

His son’s funeral was Tuesday; burial in Indiana was scheduled for Friday.

Paul Bodnar, a former railroad operations manager and ex-federal railroad inspector, told The State this week that human error usually is the main cause of accidents in areas with manual switches, such as the Graniteville site. It often happens with crews of more than 25 years experience, such as the one in charge of the parked train, he said.

“The older the guy gets, the more they’re going to be complacent because they’ve done it a thousand times,” said Bodnar, of Tequesta, Fla., who spent 10 years with the Federal Railroad Administration and now runs a railroad consulting business called PVB Consulting Inc.

In a written advisory Tuesday, the FRA, citing the Graniteville crash, said it had “particular concern that recent accidents on Class I railroads in non-signaled territory were caused, or apparently caused, by the failure of railroad employees to return manual (hand-operated) main track switches to their normal position.”

The FRA, which is assisting the NTSB in the Graniteville investigation, called on railroads to require crews who use hand-operated track switches to advise a dispatcher after they restore the switches to their normal positions. Switches divert trains from main tracks onto side tracks.

The advisory also recommended that a train’s conductor – the person in charge of the crew – and engineer should sign a form saying they know in what position they left the switch.

FRA spokesman Warren Flatau said this week his agency conducted its own interviews of the crew of the parked train a short time after the crash, and transcripts of the interviews have been given to the NTSB. He declined further comment.

The NTSB said it is looking into possible causes of the crash, including human error, mechanical failure and vandalism, Holloway said. Agency investigators haven’t ruled out anything, though they have found no evidence of vandalism or other foul play, he said.

The crew of the parked train went off duty about 7 p.m. Jan. 5 – nearly eight hours before the crash, the NTSB said. No other trains passed through the area before the wreck.

Bodnar, a former CSX operations manager, said in his 44 years of railroad experience, he has never heard of a mechanical failure of a hand-operated switch after it had been set.

Norfolk Southern is conducting its own investigation into the crash, said railroad spokesman Robin Chapman. But neither Chapman nor a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union would comment on that investigation or the employment status of the crew.

Under federal law and union contracts, railroad employees accused of wrongdoing generally are entitled to a formal hearing before disciplinary action is taken. No such hearing had been scheduled as of this week, railroad and union officials said.

The engineer of the parked trained is a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, as was Seeling, union spokesman John Bentley said. The conductor and brakeman of the parked train, and William Wright, the conductor of the moving train, are members of the United Transportation Union, said union spokesman Frank Wilner. Wright was critically injured in the crash.

The NTSB has not been able to interview Wright, Holloway said. He remained hospitalized Friday in an intensive care unit at Aiken Regional Medical Centers, a hospital spokeswoman said.

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Wilner said officers with his union have visited Wright’s family, though he declined further comment.

Graniteville-Vaucluse-Warrenville Volunteer Fire Department Chief Phil Napier might have been one of the last people to speak with Wright before he was hospitalized.

Napier said that after driving – to the wreck scene, he saw two men who he later learned were Seeling and Wright. One was lying on the track; the other was standing. The conscious person looked young, he said, adding he’s not sure the man was Wright.

“He said, “We had a head-on collision with the train, and we had a chemical leak,” Napier recalled. “Then he said he couldn’t breathe and collapsed.”

Napier said he couldn’t attend to either man because he was falling unconscious himself. He said he doesn’t remember driving himself about a mile or so out of the thick chlorine cloud.

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(c) 2005, The State (Columbia, S.C.).

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-01-14-05 2256EST

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