Newtown Line RDC-Tanker Crash 1981

I've been looking for these photos for a long time, someone actually has them and posted them online now. If anyone wants to discuss, here's the place to do it.

http://community.webshots.com/album/17779901dMvXmQnXmD

Damn! What a catastrophe. The engineer later died from his wounds.

Amazingly, I saw that same Webshots gallery on the web at least a year ago. I could have sworn the URL was posted right here. Like all good things, it went down with the ship when rr.net had yet another digital earthquake without the website content backed-up. Haven't seen those pix again 'til today.

It's sickening to see what can happen when grade-crossing protection fails. The Southhampton wreck was an extreme example. The day before was New Year's Day 1982, when no service ran. The first revenue RDC trip to run north the next day was not enough to scour all of the rust from the railheads. This very thin rust layer -- something that may or may not have been visible from the cab -- was just enough to partially insulate the rails, interfering with the signal current. Didn't the engineer suspect this might happen? Didn't the dispatcher warn him? Wasn't there a bulletin order issued, to be on guard that morning?

The reason might be because the Newtown service was then in the hands of the bizarre "Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line" experiment created by SEPTA. A presumed lack of fully FRA-compliant maintenance & operating practices may have been a contributing cause to this tragedy. That's my personal conjecture as a "civilian" observer. One of the objections at the time was that taking the Newtown branch operation from career railroaders and giving it to retrained personnel recently transferred from the Broad St. Subway was begging for trouble.

Bear in mind that back then, SEPTA was in more of a fiscal crisis in 1981 than in 2005. The entire diesel service to Bound Brook & Newark, Newtown, Bethlehem, and Pottsville had just been killed as part of a desperate campaign to keep out-of-control costs from destroying the entire system. The FCRTL began service in October. This cost-saving move sure looked nice on paper. I think one of the reasons it was so much cheaper was that oversight may have been allowed to get very thin. Did the SEPTA managers who created this idea later "walk the plank" after the Southhampton wreck?

SEPTA RDC #9164 was not one of the RDCs which were safe to operate at full track speed over crossings as a single-car train. It lacked the additional electronic axle shunts which insured that gates & flashers would trip correctly. 9164 should have been operated only as part of a two-car train that morning. Doubling the number of axles in order to shine the rails would have made a big difference.

Reading Company operating practice was that a single-car RDC train had to slow down in advance for any grade xing until it was observed that the car had entered the circuit and that gates & flashers had definitely activated. The special RDCs were the only ones that were allowed to come by at full track speed, as the additional hardware gave them a major advantage. Reading had only two cars so equipped, as most of their late-era diesel passenger schedules called for consists of at least two cars.

One of those two RDCs should have been assigned that run, given the prevailing conditions. A non-equipped car should never have been sent out as the first train to Newtown after no service in 24 hours, plus having rained most of the previous day as well. Thus, 9164 was virtually guaranteed some degree of trouble. RMS Titanic, meet the iceberg...

The two cars you speak of were the 9151 and 9152 that were equipped with an "exitation field" to properly shunt the road crossing circuits and wayside signals.

Ironically when SEPTA re-enacted the accident several days later, they used one of these exitation cars and guess what? Everything worked as intended! What a surprise!

Thanks for sharing your knowledge Franklin. Sounds like you know alot about the subject as you remember the day, weather conditions, etc.

Did this accident end single car operations on the FCRTL?

Do you happen to remember service frequency during this period? I thought it was alot better than the previous service, but I was only 9 at the time so I don't recall all of the details. I do remember that after the accident Southampton was to become the only crossing on the line to have gates installed. I don't think you see any crossings today without gates (except for short-lines).

I take it the first trip of the day was then always out of Fox Chase? I know most of the equipment was stored in Newtown, but I also thought this accident happened in the afternoon as sun glare may have been part of the reason why the truck driver did not see the lights flashing. The RDC's also had loud horns, so this guy may have been asleep at the wheel. I forget if the truck driver survived or not.

The Southhampton wreck did away with single-car operation. Prior to 1/2/1982 there were only 5 RDCs on the FCRTL roster. After the crash, two more were added, but since 9164 was retired due to wreck damage the net gain to the fleet was just 1 RDC.

I don't have a timetable from this period, and I no longer remember the service frequency. It was pretty light even before SEPTA dropped the hammer on all the diesel services. Three 2-car consists should have been enough for the shuttles to Newtown. I don't think that there were any more thru trains after FCRTL began, as the transit rules which the line operated under were not compatible with running south of Fox Chase on a "real" railroad. I mean no personal criticism by that; everything north of Fox Chase by then was regulated in a way which side-stepped FRA designation as a railroad.

FCRTL kept their RDC fleet based out of Newtown. I don't know if the first daily am trip south from Newtown was a revenue trip or a deadhead equipment move. I don't think they were in the habit of leaving a car on the siding at Fox Chase for the next morning.

aem7:
Bingo. 9151 and 52 were the standard equipment on the other lines' one-car shuttle trains for years. One did Lansdale-Bethlehem; the other, Reading-Pottsville. Neither car was in service on the day of the Southhampton crash. Gotta love such efficiency. They sure got 'em going in time for the accident reenactment, though!

How did that Oldsbobile get caught up in it?

I find it eerie that the lights still worked on the truck while engulfed in flames.

jfrey40535 wrote:Thanks for sharing your knowledge Franklin. Sounds like you know alot about the subject as you remember the day, weather conditions, etc.

Did this accident end single car operations on the FCRTL?

Do you happen to remember service frequency during this period? I thought it was alot better than the previous service, but I was only 9 at the time so I don't recall all of the details. I do remember that after the accident Southampton was to become the only crossing on the line to have gates installed. I don't think you see any crossings today without gates (except for short-lines).

I take it the first trip of the day was then always out of Fox Chase? I know most of the equipment was stored in Newtown, but I also thought this accident happened in the afternoon as sun glare may have been part of the reason why the truck driver did not see the lights flashing. The RDC's also had loud horns, so this guy may have been asleep at the wheel. I forget if the truck driver survived or not.

I remember that day quite well and actually witnessed the crash site after the fire was extinguished. IIRC, the crash occured between 10-11:00 in the morning so sun glare in the direction of the train could not have been a problem.

If there was a deadhead move from Newtown to Fox Chase that morning, one would have to assume that it would have knocked the rust off the rails and that the crossing protection functioned normally during the inbound trip. It is also quite obvious from the pictures, and newspaper reports also noted this, that the lights were operating after the crash. One additional note, I thought it was state law that all tanker trucks had to stop BEFORE entering a crossing. If the train was close enough to hit the truck while slowing for a station stop, the truck driver must have either misjudged the speed of the train and/or tried to beat it through the crossing. Either way, common sense would say he should have stopped. The Oldsmobile was behind the truck and got caught up in the mess when the truck recoiled after being struck. The driver of the car fortunately got out uninjured.

One last note....Byberry Road also had gates as well as Old Jordan Road up in Northampton. One of the gate mechanisms on Old Jordan was still in place the last time I was up there, but that's been over a year.

I can take a look when convenient if you'd like.

SCB2525 wrote:I can take a look when convenient if you'd like.

Sure thing...I'd actually be surprised if it's still there, if so, it would be one of the last remnants.

FG and all: I remember hearing of this accident-After more than 20 years,finally seeing the pictures now shows how bad it was. I have the FCRTL schedules in my collection-in my opinion this was the beginning of the end of this line as well as the restoration of SEPTA diesel service-which as all know has never returned. How many of these RDCs survive today as was 9164 scrapped after this accident? The photo of the "First class of regional rail employees 1981"-are they the CTD motormen trained for service on this line - and - was one of them involved in the accident only to die of his injuries? As FG mentions,had railroad principles been applied to this line,chances are the accident would never had happened. A bad time indeed in the history of SEPTA - MACTRAXX

A good number of the ex-Reading RDC's are still in existence today although the majority of them are no longer fully operational. Here's a rundown:

9151 - Hobo RR - operates as coach only
9152 - RCTHS - from MBTA, one prime mover removed
9153 - Bellefonte Historical RR - operational
9154 - Hobo RR - operates as coach only
9155 - BC Rail - scrapped
9156 - BC Rail - scrapped
9157 - Cape Cod RR - scrapped
9158 - Hobo RR - operates as coach only
9159 - Hobo RR - operates as coach only
9160 - BC Rail - wrecked / scrapped
9161 - Hobo RR - operates as coach only
9162 - RCTHS - from MBTA, one prime mover removed
9163 - RR Museum of PA
9164 - scrapped after grade crossing accident in Southampton, PA
9165 - MBTA - scrapped
9166 - Reading & Northern - operational
9167 - Bellefonte Historical RR - operational
9168 - Reading & Northern - operational
9169 - National RR Museum - status unknown
9170 - Alaska RR - operational
9171 - Alaska RR - operational

I've only ever heard about the accident in Southampton via postings on this board, but I never realized how horrible it really was until seeing those pictures. Thanks for finding and posting that link, jfrey, and thanks to everyone else who shared their memories and insights into the incident.

MAXX, any way you can scan/email or post the FCRTL schedule? I have the pre-FCRTL timetable and I wanted to do a comparison on running times and service frequencies under SEPTA. I've also requested ridership counts from SEPTA for that period so this would be a big help for me.

MACTRAXX wrote: As FG mentions,had railroad principles been applied to this line,chances are the accident would never had happened. A bad time indeed in the history of SEPTA - MACTRAXX

I'm not sure how this had any real bearing on the accident. Rusty rail and the inability of the lightweight RDC's to reliably activate the signal system when running as a single car train was a well known problem. It was not uncommon for the Reading and Septa to occasionally run the FP7's and the push-pull train on the Bethlehem branch during its' normal midday layover just to "shine the rails", especially as freight traffic dwindled on that line. I believe there may have also been some modifications done to the crossing signal systems on the Newtown branch to make them more "sensitive". I would also have to doubt that the train was doing track speed at the time of the crash as it would have been approaching a station stop. The point at which the RDC stopped alone tells me it couldn't have been travelling at a great rate of speed.

I stand by my question as to why anyone would drive a 40,000 gallon bomb into the path of a moving train, no matter how fast (or slow) it was going.

What an unforanent accident only if the small things were prevented this might of never happened.