If you live in New York or even the United States, you probably remember the unfortunate incident that many people woke up to 11 years ago. On Sunday, December 1, 2013, Metro-North Hudson Line #8808, the 5:55am from Poughkeepsie that violently derailed just north of Spuyten Duyvil station. This train was a through-train that made all stops to Ossining, then Tarrytown, Harlem-125, and Grand Central Terminal.
Crazily, all seven cars and the locomotive of that maxi-bomb set derailed and some even came dangerously close to the water!
In the end, four passengers were killed and 60 were injured, making this the worst MNR incident in history.
From the beginning, the press hounded the scene. As usual, they weren't accurate one bit to the point where they said that there were cars in the water, but there's no shortage of breathtaking photos of the equipment sprawled across the right-of-way.
It's story time and let's start at the beginning. It all started at 5:55am when train 8808 left Poughkeepsie and made the traditional (i.e not Breakneck Ridge nor Manitou) for Croton-Harmon, then stopped at Ossining, and Tarrytown. After Tarrytown, the next scheduled stop was Harlem-125th St, except it never got there. The train was traveling south on The Hudson Line, on track 2, and as it approached the curve just north of Spuyten Duyvil, it toppled off the tracks and began barreling toward the Harlem River.
It's important to note that the curve has been there since the days of New York Central, and the tracks run along the river in most cases, so there are quite a few decent curves in fact some are much worse.
According to the NTSB, the throttle was set to idle six seconds before the locomotive derailed, and the train dumped (i.e "dumped the air" or began emergency braking) five seconds before the locomotive derailed.
So, I think it's relatively obvious what's involved with the physics. The train was going way above the speed limit, therefore, it derailed, like physics dictates.
So, why was the train going 82 mph? Well, we got to talk about the engineer, William Rockefeller, a 15-year old Metro-North veteran. So, he had recently begun doing morning shifts after doing afternoon shifts, a change he later told investigators he had made reluctantly. This required him to leave his home in Germantown, approx. 27 miles north of Poughkeepsie, at 3:30am for work! To make sure that he had adequate rest for his shift the following day, he had gone to bed at 8:30pm the following night. On the day of the crash, he had arrived at work on time, after which he bought a cup of coffee and a hard roll, he then filled out the paperwork and attended a standard safety briefing. The main conductor, Michael Hermann, who in his limited time working with Rockefeller praised his "very smooth" handling of the equipment.
Now, like I had said earlier, everything went fine until about 1.5 miles north of Riverdale station, when Rockefeller should have begun to slow down for the curve, but he later said this:
"I don't know how to explain it... it was sort of like I was dazed, you know, looking straight ahead, almost like mesmerized. And I don't know if anybody's ever experienced like driving a long period of time in a car and staring at the headlights in front of them, and you get almost like a hypnotic feeling of staring straight ahead ... I was just staring straight head"
Rockefeller, largely unhurt, got out and began aiding passengers. Linda Smith, who had boarded in Beacon with her sister to go see a choral performance in Lincoln Center, was one of those 61 injured souls, as in the incident she had become trapped under seat cushions and unable to move.
The New York City Fire Department sent over 125 firefighters to the scene to assist in rescue
but EMS workers were delayed as they waited for the third rail to be de-energized. As a result of the incident, all service on The Hudson Line was suspended, but Amtrak trains picked up service by 3pm. All the cars were righted back onto the rail and were towed to Highbridge and Croton-Harmon yards for further inspection by the NTSB.
On Wednesday, December 4, limited service was restored on The Hudson Line, using combined trains in order to make this possible.
Here are some photos from the wreck from a variety of sources:
I think these photos really shed light on this disaster, and while I don't have the time to analyze it any further, you can definitely read up on it on Wikipedia.