The derailment of a train carrying dangerous chemicals in Ohio can be traced to an overheated wheel bearing that was 253 degrees hotter than the air temperature, federal transportation officials revealed Thursday.
The preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board offered initial clues into what most likely caused the 150-car Norfolk Southern Railway train to crash in East Palestine, just west of the Pennsylvania state line, on Feb. 3.
A hot bearing detector built into the railway transmitted an alarm message to the crew after the train’s 23rd car, the first to derail, “recorded the suspect bearing’s temperature at 253” degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient, the report said.
The detector before that recorded a temperature of 103 degrees above ambient.
Anything from 170 to 200 degrees requires a stop, according to the NTSB.
The engineer then stopped the train, which was headed from Madison, Illinois, to Conway, Pennsylvania, and then “the crew observed fire and smoke and notified the Cleveland East dispatcher of a possible derailment,” the report said.
“With dispatcher authorization, the crew applied handbrakes to the two railcars at the head of the train, uncoupled the head-end locomotives, and moved the locomotives about 1 mile from the uncoupled railcars,” it said.
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