*RAILFANS BEWARE!!!!!!!! KEEP BACK A SAFE DISTANCE!!!!!!!!* FROM: TRISTATE RAIL NEWS (NYC) NEW HAMBURG -- Metro-North Railroad officials said Thursday they will begin inspecting CSX Corp. freight trains after a 1,000-pound door on a box car flew off and severely damaged the New Hamburg station. ''Every single day, Metro-North and CSX officials will inspect every train -- and every car on every train,'' Metro-North spokesman Dan Brucker said. The decision came after an incident at 2:17 a.m. Wednesday in New Hamburg when the door of a CSX box car blew off and tore holes in a brick wall in front of a staircase used by passengers on the southbound platform. A glass shelter also was destroyed, along with light poles and pay phones. No one was injured, but the incident could have been much worse if the door had blown off only a few hours later when the platform is crowded with commuters heading to Grand Central Terminal. The cause of the apparent accident remains under investigation. Brucker said a cost estimate of the damage is pending. He said outside contractors must be brought in to do some of the brick and other repair work. Business as usual The southbound platform reopened late Wednesday afternoon and Thursday had a normal morning rush. ''Service was normal even though the place wasn't,'' Brucker said of the damaged station. The CSX freight train was heading north from New York City to Selkirk, Albany County, on the southbound Hudson line when the accident occurred. Freight trains sometimes use alternate tracks during off hours. Brucker said the inspections of CSX trains will take place in Poughkeepsie for southbound freight trains and in Oak Point in the Bronx for northbound trains. The train that lost a door had two locomotives and 118 cars. CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said Thursday the cause of the accident remains under investigation. He said CSX observers saw no problem with the car when it passed through the Croton-Harmon station in Westchester earlier in the run. He said the incident was rare. ''I'm not aware of this happening before,'' Sullivan said. CSX Corp. provides freight transportation across America and the world. Formed in 1980, CSX Transportation operates the largest rail network in the eastern United States, the CSX Web site says.
I'd swear that this was being done not too many years ago? They employed car men and car inspectors. Before beancounteritis took over, and they cut all the jobs...... Boxcab E50
In the past and probably today it was a requirement that the doors must be closed and locked before an empty car could be picked up. The closed and locked doors are not the ones who fall off. The extra per diem charges for a car not picked up usually makes the company who received the car a little more likely to close the doors.
Cars are given a visual when being assembled in the yard. Vandals, thieves and hobos are usually responsible for the cars that you see with open doors. Russ
