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Hoboken train crash

'She was gone': Engineer details horrific Hoboken train crash

Christopher Maag, James M. O'Neill and John Chichowski
The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record

HOBOKEN, N.J. — After a few sips at the downtown Dunkin' Donuts on an otherwise quiet morning in Hoboken, N.J., William Blaine heard the kind of noise that no one — especially a train engineer — ever wants to hear.

Damage to the terminal is extensive.

“Kaboom! Like a bomb,” he recalled.

What do most us do in the face of unexpected, unimaginable horror?

“At first you freeze, like you can’t believe what’s happening in front of you, and then … and then … you run,” he said.

But Blaine ran TOWARD the noise, TOWARD the shattered rail station, TOWARD fleeing horror-struck commuters including the staggering man with blood pouring from his head. It seems that’s what you do if you’ve been piloting freight trains for 17 years, which is what this 53-year-old rail veteran has been doing for the Norfolk Southern rail system.

Apparently, if you’re an engineer, you don’t run away from your worst nightmare. You confront it — except in this case he nearly tripped over something.

“It was a body, a young woman,” he explained, “She was gone.”

If there ever was someone to make some sense of an inexplicable horror only moments after it occurred  when no one in authority had yet made any statements, when investigators were still en route to the scene from Washington — here was William Blaine of Bear, Del., a bonafide engineer on special duty in Hoboken who might be able to offer a few leads to cynical reporters still trying to verify a few things. Was it one or three people who had died? And what about this unlikely report that the locomotive had became airborne upon hitting the bumper barrier at the end of the line?

Airborne? How could a train be airborne?

“Speed!” he said. “It could happen if the train hit the bumper at 30 mph or more.”

After the locomotive made contact with the barrier, the cars behind it would have kept going, which would have multiplied the impact, he noted. The impact was so severe that the train crashed into a wall, which led to a ceiling collapse, one death and more than 100 injuries — figures confirmed later.

Why couldn’t the engineer stop it?

“You always slow down when you’re coming into a train station because there are so many people there,” said the freight engineer, adding that mechanisms in most trains require an engineer to trigger an automatic stopping system at least 30 seconds before a train is expected to arrive.

Blaine didn’t know the engineer, but he said he was one of the first people to see him after the crash and after he assisted victims inside the station. The engineer was still in his seat in the debris-covered locomotive, he said.

“He was slumped over,” he added. “The only thing I can think of is: Maybe he passed out or had a heart attack.”

The engineer driving the train, Thomas Gallagher, was confirmed to be a resident of Morris Plains, N.J., according to the borough mayor, Frank Dreutzler. Dreutzler said police were sent to Gallagher’s house, where there was a large media presence Thursday night. Police were telling reporters not to step onto the property.

As a locomotive engineer for NJ Transit, Gallagher made $110,996 last year, including $39,210.96 in overtime pay, according to state records.

The investigation now under way by the National Transportation Safety Board will no doubt include interviews with Gallagher, who was hospitalized with undisclosed injuries and later released, as well as a review of the black boxes that recorded his actions in the moments before the crash.

Would new technology have helped?

Some have already begun to weigh in with their own theories and recommendations. New Jersey’s two U.S. senators — Robert Menendez and Cory Booker — said such crashes can be prevented with positive train control, a sensor system that automatically causes trains to slow down appreciably in high-risk situations. NJ Transit trains, they said, are not equipped with PTC.

Under hard-fought federal legislation adopted more than a year ago, most freight trains similar to those piloted by William Blaine operate under PTC. All commercial freight trains are expected to be equipped with this technology by 2018.

Despite nearly two decades at the helm of trains with much heavier loads than the one on the Pascack Valley commuter line that crashed on Thursday, the Norfolk Southern engineer said it might take a long time for him to shake his Hoboken experience.

“If it was me and I killed people, I don’t know what I’d do,” he said. “I’d want to die.”

Related coverage:

One dead, 108 hurt, many questions after N.J. train tragedy

Train in Hoboken crash lacked automatic brakes

Hoboken crash timeline: What happened when

'It didn't stop. It didn't slow down.' Stunned commuters describe Hoboken train crash

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