60 Minutes II

Every 24 Hours

By Andrew Lindenauer

May 14, 2001 / 5:32 PM EDT / CBS

In March, Amtrak's California Zephyr train derailed in Iowa, killing one passenger and injuring 90 others. Nine months before that, a Union Pacific crash in Louisiana forced 3,000 people from their homes. Is there a connection? Yes. Both crashes are believed to have been caused by a failure, not in the train, but in the track.

During the economic boom, America's rails are carrying more trains and heavier trains than ever before. Even so, there's evidence some railroads are cutting corners on track maintenance with disastrous results. Scott Pelley reports.

Train accidents due to track failure are happening at a rate of nearly one every 24 hours.

In 1996, in Weyauwega, Wisconsin broken track set off a derailment and explosion of gas and propane that forced the evacuation of the entire town - 3000 people - out of their homes for more than two weeks. In 1997, in Kansas City, 1600 people fled an inferno when a tanker car crashed after hitting a defective rail.

Last year, Amtrak's Southwest Chief flew off the track in Kansas at 2 a.m., injuring 32 people. All these accidents were caused by rails that failed. These problems are tied directly to how well the rails are maintained by the railroads.

"We're conducting a rolling experiment," says one well-respected track safety inspector who works for a major railroad. He asked not to be identified for fear of losing his job.

"They're not just running one experiment, the experiment of the highest tonnage and highest amount of trains in the history of the world, they're running another experiment the lowest number of people maintaining that traffic and tonnage," he says. "And it seems to us at times they're just trying to see how far they can go before it goes to hell on them."

All of us really should be concerned about track safety because we are all close by the railroads, they're everywhere," says Steven Moss, who is with a company that analyzes government policy. Last year he headed a study on track safety.

Moss says that railroads are more concerned about shareholders than safety.
"And profits are their first concern, says Moss. They're under pressure to move freight. They've got to get it from here to there as fast as possible, and as efficiently as possible that's their priority. So to stop and say, "Well, is this track as safe as it could be or should be" is not a first priority. They certainly don't want to have an accident, but they want to move freight.

Major railroads declined to be interviewed for this story. One, Burlington Northern/Santa Fe, sent a letter saying it regards "track safety as a number one priority."

The railroads say that safety is their top priority. "They tell us that, too," says the inspector. "But it's not. It's like job two or three. The top priority is the budget."

We talked to trck inspectors across the country who told us the same thing. When track needs repair, the railroad's track inspector is in a bind. He's required by law to either fix the problem or issue a "slow order,"which slows the trains down until repairs are made. The inspectors say some managers have a one-track mind - keep the trains moving at top speed.

"They won't let you go out and fix bad track because it will result in a slow order," says the inspector.

One track inspector told us that when he does impose a slow order, sometimes it doesn't stick. "They've come out and removed them without repairing them," he says. He says it has happened not only on his railroad, but on different railroads across the country.

The railroads are supposed to be watched over by government track inspectors who works for the Federal Railroad Administration.

"We try to go where the risks are and we've been successful doing that," says George Gavalla, who is in charge of safety at the FRA. "We've been driving down the number of deaths. We've been driving down the number of injuries."

But, Gavalla admits he has too few inspectors for the more than 220,000 miles of track in America. Including state inspectors, he has just over 100 inspectors.

Says Gavalla: "There's more track than we can see in any one month. There's more track than we can see in perhaps any six or seven months."

He says that the railroads regulate themselves. "Pretty much the way that our system works in this country with railroads is that it is a self policing thing. They're given guidance by the federal government about how to regulate themselves and then they are essentially left alone. With occasional audits to look at whether or not they're doing what they're supposed to do."

60 Minutes II asked Gavalla to look at some pictures of track taken by a resident of Eunice, La. - track owned by Union Pacific. "Those are clearly unacceptable conditions," he said of the tracks pictured. "We take very aggressive enforcement action when we find those conditions."

But they didn't find those conditions in time. The photos 60 Minutes II showed Gavalla were taken near the track where this disaster occurred days before. Last May this derailment forced 3,000 people from their homes in Eunice. After the crash investigators found more than 400 defects in the track. "There's no excuse for the railroad missing that," says Gavalla.

Union Pacific declined an interview. The major railroads directed 60 Minutes II to see Chuck Dettmann, head of safety for the Association of American Railroads.

"I would suggest to you that there are isolated incidents in our business and others that do not accurately reflect the systemic health of this industry and the commitment to going forwrd to safety," he says.

"We have a million and a half train miles every day. Our goal would be zero. But when you look at the rate of main line derailments in this industry is going down and has been going down each year over the last ten years."

Dettmann tends to exaggerate the railroads' progress. The derailment rate has declined in only five of the last ten years. Last year it was up slightly. But the railroads' argument is this: traffic is up, and the number of accidents is about the same; so the rails are safer.

At the railroad industry's test center in Colorado, researchers study derailments. Researchers have also created test cars that can spot weaknesses in tracks. They've perfected ultrasound tools that find flaws inside rails. In this test new high strength rails and tough concrete ties are hammered week after week under overloaded trains to find their breaking point.

All of these technologies are in wide use today. But even so the number of accidents caused by track holds fairly steady, averaging 340 a year in the last ten years. So far, the worst derailment this year was the Amtrak crash in Iowa.

Investigators found a broken rail and, nearby, ten areas with defective ties. Why didn't they know about it before the crash? "It's very difficult to be out on every section of track all the time," says Gavalla.

But, Gavalla says, officials can check the railroad's inspection records. By law the railroads must report the true condition of their tracks to the railroad administration. But when government inspectors check, sometimes the records look better than the rails.

Their audit of CSX, one of the nation's largest railroads found that the company's inspection reports, "did not reflect the conditions found by the agency's employees."

"That meant that the inspection records were not accurate," Gavalla says. "They were not appropriate. They were not recording the defects as they were required to do by federal law and federal regulation."

For example a 1999 federal report say CSX admitted to "loose bolts" on a track in Georgia but the inspector found "two broken rails." Another 1999 federal report on a track in Florida says CSX neglected to report rails that were too far apart, defective ties and defective fasteners. These defects were on track that carries passengers and hazardous materials.

Federal inspectors also say that Union Pacific's reports didn't include all of the 400 defects found after the Eunice crash. "They were not following our federal safety standards," says Gavalla. "They were performing track inspections and it was not showing the appropriate conditions... they were being misleading in their record keeping." Union Pacific says it shared all the information it had on the condition of the track. After the 60 Minutes II interview the federal railroad adminitration wrote to 60 Minutes II to say that the the agency assumes both the records of Union Pacific and CSX were wrong due to incompetence not willful falsification.

"We - we find pockets of that - frequently," says Gavalla. "But it' not indicative of the overall condition. There are pockets of that and when we find those pockets, we take aggressive action."

That aggressive action last year amounted to fining the industry $3.5 million. The major railroad's total revenue in 1999 was 33 billion. While the industry is enjoying record traffic one inspector says the route to that success has taken too many short cuts.

"I've seen coal derailments where there's rail sticking right through the side of a coal car," says the anonymous inspector. "But if that's a car of anhydrous ammonia or some other deadly chemical, it doesn't take long for that chemical to spread. I've seen the potential for that to happen and I see it now even more so."

Judging from last month the derailment rate does not seem to be improving. On April 2, 41 cars derailed in Hinton, West Virginia. On April 18, 50,000 gallons of diesel spilled in Bussey, Iowa. On April 22, 51 cars off the rails in Valley, Nebraska. It's a troubling track record which many inspectors fear points to another disaster.