The derailment of a CSX freight train in Ellicott City early Tuesday morning and the death of two teenage girls as a result has prompted railroad officials to conduct a safety review of the track area, where youths take advantage of the easy access to hang out.
Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr, both 19, were killed when a train derailed on the CSX bridge on which they were sitting, spilling roughly 110 tons of coal onto the girls.
The railroad is a well-known in Ellicott City as a hang out spot for teens. Piles of beer bottles can be found in some areas along the tracks near the bridge, according to residents.
“We’ve got to take a look at this with CSX and figure out how we make this as secure as possible,” said Howard County Executive Ken Ulman.
As other safety concerns have been addressed, trespassing remains a persistent issue for the industry and is now the leading cause of death on the railroad, CSX spokesman Gary Sease said.
“Any urban area is potentially a problem because of the proximity to our railroad,” Sease said. “It’s not unusual in larger urban areas to see people routinely walking on our tracks.”
The National Transportation Safety Board, the lead investigators of the Ellicott City derailment, have issued a few recommendations over the years to prevent trespassing, including two recommendations related to installing fencing.
After a young man was electrocuted while trespassing on freight trains in a District rail yard in 1971, the NTSB recommended the Federal Railroad Administration create rules to require fencing or other methods near tracks and right of ways to discourage trespassers.
Fourteen years and several studies later, the board reconsidered the recommendation and closed it, citing an FRA study that found no concentration of areas where trespassing was so problematic that it required fencing to stop fatalities.
“It’s not feasible to try and barricade off all railways the same way you couldn’t fence off all roadways,” said FRA spokesman Warren Flatau. “There is no one-size-fits-all answer.”
The FRA and many train operators, including CSX, have become involved in Operation Lifesaver — a public awareness program that educates people about the dangers of walking along tracks — since the D.C. incident.
But little has changed. In a 1978 recommendation, the NTSB wrote that nearly 500 pedestrians are killed by trains each year.
That number persists to this day. And according to the FRA, one person is killed by a train while trespassing each day, accounting for the majority of train-related deaths.
A key deterrent is CSX’s 30,000 employees, who are required to report trespassers on tracks, Sease said.
A centralized reporting system, perhaps monitored by the FRA, would make for a better way to focus on high-frequency trespassing areas, according to former NTSB Chairman Jim Hall.
“It’s a major problem, but it’s one we need to start paying more attention to,” Hall said.
