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   Engineer Donald Sager, who boarded the train on the night of Aug. 1 in   
   Connellsville, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles west of Hyndman, was   
   uncomfortable with it. It was, he later told federal investigators, “big   
   and heavy and ugly.” It had 38 empty cars near the front with almost all   
   the train’s tonnage behind them, so the empty cars would be lurching   
   around as all that weight bore down on them. He said the train would be   
   bucking.   
      
   Sager took the train with his conductor, James Beitzel, from the   
   Connellsville yard at 8:28 p.m. under a clouded sky and began climbing the   
   backside of the mountain outside Hyndman. The climb was steep and the   
   train needed a push from an extra locomotive, which coupled onto the rear.   
   The locomotive broke off when the bulk of the train crested the mountain,   
   passing a sign that read: “Summit of Alleghenies, Altitude 2258.”   
      
      
   THE LONG, WINDING DESCENT into Hyndman is one of the steepest in all of   
   CSX territory, and the train weighed 18,252 tons, heavier than 200 fueled   
   and loaded Boeing 737s. An engineer on a train like that has to closely   
   watch the speed. It’s best to operate the brakes proactively, but as the   
   train started down the mountain, Sager’s instruments were telling him the   
   air brakes were beginning to fail. He stopped the train at 11:36 p.m. and   
   radioed dispatchers.   
      
   “Got a problem with the train.”   
      
   Beitzel climbed down from the engine with his light and began walking in   
   the gravel along the tracks. He had to manually set the brakes on 30% of   
   the cars to be sure the train didn’t start moving on its own. Per company   
   rules, he applied them on 58 cars near the front, cranking around and   
   around a big steel wheel at the end of each car. Then Beitzel walked   
   nearly 2 miles to the rear, where he found the problem at Car 159. A brake   
   line had cracked and air was hissing out. That type of malfunction   
   typically affects the brakes on all of the cars, like a chain reaction.   
      
   About two and a half hours later, when he finally got back, his shift had   
   ended and Sager was briefing a new crew. Mechanics replaced the brake line   
   while Ron Main, the new engineer, and Michael Bobb, the new conductor,   
   waited. It was around 2 a.m. The train wouldn’t budge with the hand brakes   
   on, so Bobb climbed down and walked back, knocking off brakes as he went.   
   He released 25 and left the remaining set because the descent was steep, a   
   practice at odds with accepted rail safety then and now, investigators and   
   railroad workers say. Then finally, at 4:17 a.m., the train began rolling   
   down the valley into Hyndman.   
      
   Bobb’s approach created a dangerous problem, investigators would later   
   conclude. The 33 cars with hand brakes left on were toward the head of the   
   train, and 13 of those were empty. There were also 25 other empty cars   
   near the front. This meant the lightest section of the train was doing the   
   bulk of the braking. It also meant that the heaviest section of the train   
   — literally the rest of it — was bearing down on them. Such forces can pop   
   empties or lightly loaded cars off the tracks, as had already happened in   
   at least three long-train derailments investigated by the FRA.   
      
   The other part of the problem was in the hand brakes themselves. They play   
   the same role as emergency brakes in an automobile; conductors usually put   
   them on when they need to park a train. Applied and functioning properly,   
   they immobilize a train car’s wheels. But driving a train with the hand   
   brakes set can damage it, and that’s what happened to the Hyndman train.   
   Its speed fluctuated as its locked steel wheels ground along the tracks,   
   beginning to deform and lose purchase.   
      
   It’d be easy to blame Bobb or Main for what was about to happen. But they   
   were only following CSX policy when they set the hand brakes on this huge,   
   heavy train and sent it rolling down the long, steep hill. A safe and   
   proper move would have been to break the train into two at the top of the   
   hill and drive each section down separately, said Grady Cothen, a former   
   FRA attorney who has written a widely cited white paper on the challenges   
   of operating longer trains. But it would have taken more time, and the   
   train was already delayed. CSX at the time was the only one of the seven   
   largest train companies to allow the use of hand brakes to control the   
   speed of a train down a hill.   
      
   It would also be easy to blame the crew in New Castle that had added eight   
   empty and six loaded cars to the head of the train, making it longer and   
   less stable. Or the crew before it in Lordstown that added 28 cars, all   
   empty, to the head of the train. But these crews, too, were following a   
   CSX policy, which dictated they could ignore a more sensible policy —   
   don’t put so many loaded cars behind empties — if they were pressed for   
   time. It was a risky edict considering crews are always pressed for time   
   in the age of precision scheduled railroading.   
      
   That August morning, the train hit a speed of 29 miles an hour as it   
   reached the bottom of the hill, passing the house where Shaffer slept on   
   his living room couch. Main and Bobb felt a lunge in the cab. The train’s   
   emergency brakes kicked in and it screeched to a stop.   
      
   “Hey, Alex,” Main called to the dispatcher. “We just went into emergency.   
   ... I’m not sure what’s going on back there, but the conductor’s getting   
   ready to get on the ground.” (Main, Bobb and Sager could not be reached,   
   and Beitzel declined to comment. Their remarks are from transcripts in the   
   federal investigation of the accident.)   
      
   Bobb climbed down from the cab and began walking toward the problem.   
   Suddenly, there was an explosion and a fireball rose into the night about   
   a half-mile back from the engines. Main, up in his locomotive, hadn’t   
   noticed. He didn’t learn about it until a man drove up to his window and   
   yelled the news into the cab.   
      
   Federal investigators would later learn that Car 35 — empty, hand brakes   
   set — had jumped the tracks on a curve, and two cars ahead of it and 30   
   behind it had followed.   
      
   After the derailment, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended   
   in a letter that CSX prohibit using hand brakes on empty cars to control a   
   train’s speed down a hill. It also recommended that large blocks of empty   
   cars be placed near the end, not the front. “We would appreciate a   
   response within 90 days of the date of this letter, detailing the actions   
   you have taken or intend to take to implement these recommendations.”   
      
   But CSX responded more than two years later and only after ProPublica   
   began asking recently why it had ignored the NTSB. In its response letter,   
   CSX says the agency was wrong; the train’s makeup did not contribute to   
   the crash. However it still reformed the policy, requiring, among other   
   things, placing more weight near front of the train and prohibiting trains   
   from “having more than a third of its weight in the trailing fourth of the   
   train.” It also adopted the NTSB’s other recommendation on hand brakes,   
   prohibiting their use on empty cars in “mountain grade territory,” a   
   company spokesperson told ProPublica. It said the derailment was caused by   
   “hand brakes on empty rail cars to control train speed on steep grade ...   
   not PSR.”   
      
      
   BY THAT AFTERNOON, emergency manager Walls and the other first responders   
   had evacuated everyone who would agree to leave Hyndman. The tanker burned   
   for two days and yet did not explode. Though it came close: The pressure   
   inside the car caused the steel wall of its inner hull to stretch as thin   
      
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