This afternoon at about 4:23PM local a Metro Link commuter train on its way from downtown to Moorpark crashed head on into a Union Pacific Freight train headed the other way on the same set of tracks. Pictures
Nice job somebody. Passenger train headed North, freight train headed South. Only one set of tracks, and the trains met on a curve where visibility was limited
I work about 1 mile from where the accident occurred.
Now here is where it gets freeky. Just before the accident I was on a test drive with a customer that had bought a new (to her) Volvo. As we headed East on Devonshire St. the crossing gates came down at the rail crossing. I was first in line at the gates. About 1000 feet south of where we were there is a Metro Link station. Well there we sit for a couple of minutes, no train. I shrug and say it is probably a Metro Link in the station. Sure enough the gates open with no train passing, so as I drive across the tracks I look South and see the engine of the Metro Link train.
So we drive back to the shop, and I am explaining something to the customer when we hear sirens. Firetrucks start rolling past the shop going flat out. Then come the helicopters circling over the shop. Then comes the Sheriff’s department greatbigfreakinghelicopter.
WTF?
Then we hear from one of the guys in the next shop that there had been a train wreck.
This upsets my customer. Upsets her a lot. She was a passenger on this Metro Link train. She once showed me a picture of the train car she was in. This isn’t the picture she showed me but it is the best I could find.
Look at the car on the left, see where you can make out METRO? He seat was on the far side of the car, directly inboard of the O. Her legs were dangling in mid air, and she had to wait for the firefighters to get a ladder to get her down. :eek:
I went out about an hour ago for dinner and passed a bunch of heavy equipment and lights that I have to believe was headed there. Coming back there were several groups of fire and police vehicles headed that way with lights and sirens.
I go on maybe two test drives a day. What are the odds that I would go on a test drive and have that train trip the sensors when I have a passenger from a previous fatal Metro Link accident in the car with me?
All in all a strange afternoon.
How scary for your customer to have to see that happen again. There was a man interviewed earlier on (I think, my husband was flipping from channel to channel) KCAL 9 that had survived both this wreck and the 2005 incident. He said he and fellow passengers had recently been discussing where they would ideally sit in case of an accident.
Bad day that… Did not make the news in Arkansas. All about IKE here.
This is a major, major accident. The confirmed death toll is 15, and one of the firefighters at the scene said there are “many” bodies still left to recover. The rescue effort has been shown live on nearly all the local stations since it happened. For comparison, the Glendale crash (the worst Metrolink crash in L.A. until now) “only” killed 11.
(Hasn’t made the national news, though. Apparently there’s a hurricane making landfall or something…)
The trains crashed in one of the worst locations possible, in a very narrow ravine just before the tunnel that leads out of the Valley. Right now they are bulldozing a brand new road to the site so the rescue crews can bring in their heavy equipment to clear the wreckage. I used to play on those tracks as a kid, so I know that area very well. 
I work in Chatsworth; those tracks run just behind my company’s property, and my day is filled with feeling my desk vibrate every time the trains run by. If this crash happened just a few minutes earlier, I know my day would have ended very differently.
We haven’t been watching much of the local television coverage due to having a kidlet running around, but what I’ve been seeing online, it’s really such a horrible tragedy.
How long before you-know-who says this is is retaliation for California allowing gay marriage?
Sounds like we are neighbors. I work just east of the train station (I can see the tops of the cars when they are stopped at the station) on Canoga, where are you at?
It’s been about 10 years, but I used to ride that train almost everyday to work.
I’m down over by Nordoff & DeSoto, right before the track curves off to head north.
My secretary rides that line every day; she takes the later train, but knows people on that train. After the last accident, I don’t know how she kept getting on the train, and now this. They’re saying now that the conductor on the Metrolink train ignored a red light; it appears he’s among the dead now.
it is a horrible accident.
cnn did rather well covering ike and the accident. they bounce back and forth between texas and calif.
they just reported that one of the critically injured people in hospital died bring the toll to 25. very bad weekend in the us.
Lamplighter?
HA! Everyone knows the Lamplighter! My husband and I have lunch there about once a week.