‘Praying that he was still alive’: No closure on anniversary of Yellow Line crash

The shock and terror resulting from a CTA Yellow Line train hurtling into snowplow equipment a year ago is still palpable.

“Around the curve came the Skokie Swift and there was nothing that we can do,” recalled CTA rail instructor Christopher Edgerton in an interview with the National Transportation Safety Board.

On impact, “my head went through the window of the door,” rail instructor Eugene Spells told investigators.

Less definitive is what caused the collision near the Howard Station that injured dozens of people, three of them critically, and cost about $8.7 million in damage.

The two men were in the snowplow as part of a training exercise on Nov. 16, 2023.

Edgerton rushed to Spells, “praying that he was still alive. His right hand was severely cut up, he was telling me that he needed help.”

On board the morning train, 30 passengers including Stephen Helmer, his wife and adult daughter had no time to react.

“I was thrown into a pole,” Helmer said during a NTSB interview. A stroller with his 2-year-old grandchildren “went up in the air and flipped over,” although the twins weren’t ejected.

The NTSB’s final report is expected out before the second anniversary.

“It’s a miracle that it did not turn out to be worse,” University of Illinois Chicago Urban Transportation Center Director P.S. Sriraj said.

Here are some key factors investigators are weighing.

Communication meltdown

Workers were training in a diesel-powered snow locomotive, known as a Snow Fighter, which had stopped on a live track when the southbound train hit it.

What mystifies experts is the disconnect — given CTA personnel were aware of the training. The train operator noticed the Snow Fighter in a yard that morning, and Spells was in contact with the Howard tower before the collision, NTSB records show.

“I tend to believe it’s a communication issue as much as anything else. It’s not like the snowplow (just) appeared at that location, like a ‘Beam me up Scotty’ type thing,” Sriraj said.

Human factors?

The Federal Transit Administration prohibits rail employees with an alcohol concentration of .02 or higher from operating trains. Tests the day of the crash showed the train operator’s blood alcohol content was .06; follow-up analyses found BACs of .043 and .048, according to the NTSB.

However, when a stop warning was issued, “the operator immediately initiated a full service braking application,” the NTSB said. The CTA also said the operator acted “in a timely fashion.”

The 47-year-old joined the CTA in 2021 and had been a train operator a little over three months when the collision occurred.

Track conditions

NTSB investigators noticed a “black substance” on the rails near the crash site, suspected to be plant materials, as well as fallen leaves and leaf particles.

The area is a “uniquely wooded environment,” the CTA noted in a November 2023 memo.

Clean tracks provide optimum friction between the train wheels and rails for braking.

But the rails approaching the collision site “appear to have been compromised in their ability to provide a reasonable level of adhesion with the train wheels,” probably due to crushed leaves, CTA engineers said in a December 2023 report.

Braking

The train was traveling at 54 mph, below the maximum speed of 55 mph when an alert was given to brake. It had slowed to about 27 mph upon impact.

The operator testified thinking “my body’s going to get crushed. I slowed the train down the best that I could … it slid.”

CTA and NTSB records show the braking system and the sliding issue are under scrutiny.

The CTA report found “the signal system design for the track circuits in approach to the collision site does not provide for a safe braking distance.”

Furthermore, the “braking distance design from the 1970s did not match CTA’s current braking distance criteria.”

The CTA deferred comments on the investigation to the NTSB. The operator is on inactive status due to crash injuries and employment action will occur upon his return, officials said.

The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, which represents the train operator, had no comment.

For Sriraj, the calamity is “a confluence of things that came together exactly at the same time. The sum is greater than the parts.”

Got a comment on CTA safety? Drop an email to mpyke@dailyherald.com.