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00:00A devastating head-on from the early days of BNSF.
00:05But just because not very many people know about it, doesn't mean it shouldn't be forgotten about.
00:11And this resulted in many safety recommendations too.
00:14This is the story of the Clarendon Train Collision.
00:18On May 28, 2002, a BNSF coal train departed Amarillo, Texas, headed east.
00:30There were three locomotives on the train.
00:32SD70MAX8876 leading and 8902 trailing.
00:37116 coal cars, mostly Pullman Standards, built for the BN.
00:42And a distributed power unit, 8930.
00:46These units were all built in 1999, so they were fairly new.
00:50And they were painted in the new H2 scheme, compared to hundreds of BNSF's inherited executive MAX from the BN.
00:58In the opposite direction, traversing the same line, which was ex-Fort Worth and Denver,
01:04a westbound intermodal departed Childress, Texas.
01:09There were only two engines, both on the head end, and both Dash 9s, also built in the late 90s.
01:154385 in the lead, and 4566 behind it.
01:20The coal train had set out one defective car in Amarillo before departing.
01:24Very similar to the happenings of another BNSF collision two years after,
01:29both trains were operating in unsignaled territory,
01:32and therefore relied on track warrant control to direct train traffic.
01:37Seven minutes after departure, the coal train's track warrants, in effect for them,
01:43to proceed out of restricted limits in Amarillo, to the east switch of Malden Siding.
01:49And after they passed Malden Siding, to stop at the east switch on the main, beside Ashtola Siding.
01:5616 minutes after the coal train had received a second track warrant,
01:59and the coal train still quite a few miles west of Ashtola Siding,
02:03the coal train's engineer placed a call on his cell phone that lasted 23 minutes.
02:08A big no-no.
02:10The intermodal, meanwhile, having priority,
02:13was asked to take the siding at Ashtola while the coal train was stopped on the main.
02:17After the coal train's engineer had got off the phone,
02:20he reported that he was clear of milepost 305 and outside the limits of track warrant 15,
02:25the first track warrant that they were issued.
02:28The track warrant ordering them to stop at Ashtola was track warrant number 16.
02:32A few minutes later, the coal train cleared the wayside detector at milepost 294.
02:38Cleared, meaning the back of the train had passed the detector.
02:41Adding the distance to the head end, we can calculate that the head end was at about milepost 292.8.
02:47The coal train engineer then reported that status to the dispatcher.
02:51Then the coal train received their last track warrant.
02:54And after arrival, to proceed from Ashtola to Headley Siding,
02:59after the passage and clearance of the intermodal, 4385 West.
03:04Less than a minute after this transmission took place,
03:07the coal train engineer placed another cell phone call, this one lasting for 10 minutes.
03:12At about the same time, the coal train passed the West Junction switch at Ashtola Siding.
03:18About three minutes into this call,
03:21the coal train ran the red signal at the point where it was supposed to stop for the intermodal.
03:25Meanwhile, the intermodal passed the east end of the siding directly to the east of Ashtola,
03:31which was Clarendon Siding, nearest to the town with the same name.
03:35The intermodal reached the other end of Clarendon Siding within two minutes.
03:39Two minutes after that, the engineer hung up his cell phone.
03:43At about milepost 280.1, the coal train engineer was totally lost on where he was.
03:49He didn't know if he was supposed to have stopped a while ago,
03:52or if he was supposed to continue running, because he was distracted by his cell phone calls.
03:57He soon answered his own question in the worst way possible.
04:01He saw a triangle of lights directly ahead of him on his own track.
04:05The intermodal crew also saw the coal train on their same track.
04:09All four crew members bailed out, and then the trains collided.
04:25Witnesses and photographs alike describe the scene as total carnage.
04:30Multiple engines and cars lay derailed.
04:32The engineer to the intermodal train was killed.
04:35The door to the lead engine of the intermodal was thrown about 300 feet away from the track.
04:41The engine itself, meanwhile, was torched,
04:44and both of the trailing units on the trains suffered damage as well,
04:48whether that be fire damage or collision damage.
04:528876's cab section was found at the bottom of a pile of wreckage.
04:578876 had impaled itself into the lead engine of the intermodal,
05:02throwing 4385 aside, and 8876's body crunching up on itself.
05:098902 was found laying on its right side, with the cab end having suffered fire damage.
05:16During cleanup, 8876 and 4385, the lead engines of both trains, were towed away for scrap,
05:24while 8902 and 4566 were repaired, and are still in service today.
05:29The collision and wreck in total ended up causing $8,125,652 in damage.
05:38That's a lot!
05:40The NTSB pointed the blame at the engineer of the Coltrain,
05:45who was using his cell phone when he shouldn't have been,
05:48and wasn't paying attention to his track warrants.
05:50However, it was decided that it wasn't all his fault.
05:53BNSF discontinued their practice of issuing after-arrival track warrants to moving trains,
05:59and instead opted to wait until the train was stopped at the point it would surpass another train.
06:04So have we seen the last collision in Texas?
06:07Sadly, the answer is no.