A Metra engineer has been suspended without pay after he sped through the South Side site of a recent fatal train derailment during an afternoon rush hour last week, causing passengers to file complaints, a Metra spokeswoman said.
The southbound train exceeded the 20 m.p.h. speed limit on a section of track that was installed after the Sept. 17 derailment just south of 47th Street near the Dan Ryan Expressway so trains could go around the accident site, Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said Monday.
Pardonnet would not disclose the speed of the train, but sources said it was not going as fast as the Sept. 17 train that derailed. That train was traveling 69 m.p.h., nearly seven times the 10 m.p.h. speed limit, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
One passenger who e-mailed the Tribune said the train lurched and then rocked back and forth as it moved through a curve before slowing down.
The conductor of the train also was suspended without pay, Pardonnet said. She did not know how long the conductor has worked for Metra but said the engineer has been an employee for 16 years. Pardonnet would not identify the crew members.
The incident happened Thursday on train No. 411, which departed LaSalle Street station at 4:57 p.m. Pardonnet said the engineer and conductor were taken off their jobs that day, but she didn’t know how Metra learned of the incident.
“As soon as we found out, we took the immediate action to suspend his license,” she said, referring to the engineer.
“Clearly this train was going faster than it should have been. It was in no danger of being derailed but certainly given our circumstances our passengers are very sensitive as they pass through that area.”
The incident happened less than two weeks after a northbound train sped through a crossover south of 47th Street, causing it to derail. Two women were killed and scores of passengers were injured. One woman remains in critical condition.
Though the National Transportation Safety Board said the signals appeared to work properly in the Sept. 17 incident, the engineer has said he was signaled to proceed straight, not switch tracks, which would have meant he could travel at 70 m.p.h. through the area.
Since the fatal derailment, engineers have been told to slow down in the area because Metra had installed the temporary section of track to route trains around the accident site. Metra also posted yellow signs in the area to remind engineers to reduce speed.
“Every single crew on the Rock Island had been told about this,” Pardonnet said.
Since Thursday’s incident, Metra also has posted additional speed limit signs in the area to alert engineers, she said.
The Sept. 17 incident has spawned more than 40 lawsuits. In court Monday, a Metra attorney told Cook County Circuit Judge Kathy Flanagan that Metra has secured all of the evidence from the derailment.
“As far as I know, it’s all been accounted for,” attorney Sue Ann Rosen said.
Last week Flanagan ordered Rosen to provide a list of all evidence, whether anything was destroyed and at whose direction.
Metra wants to put the locomotive and all but one of the cars that were involved in the Sept. 17 accident back into service, Rosen said. She asked the plaintiff’s attorneys to inspect those cars by Oct. 31.
The one remaining car was the site of most of the injuries and at least one fatality. The NTSB has sequestered the car.
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Vgroark@tribune.com
