Runaway train blamed on driver's mistake
The runaway train that rolled through Ohio towns and farmland with a hazardous cargo started its near 70 mile ghost journey when the driver mistakenly hit the throttle instead of the brake.
For two hours, the 47 wagon train with no one at the controls chugged past back gardens and freshly planted fields until another CSX Transportation employee made a daring leap onto the locomotive and brought it to a stop.
According to CSX investigators, a driver who has worked for the railroad for 35 years had set two of three brakes on the train.
He thought he had set the third brake but accidentally hit the throttle instead.
By the time he realised the mistake, he had hopped off the train to manually switch tracks, CSX said.
The train was moving too fast for him to get back on board.
The driver chased the train, grabbing onto a railing on the engine, said Fred Alger, transport director for the Ohio Public Utilities Commission.
But the railing was wet from rain, and the engineer couldn’t pull himself up, Alger said.
He said the train dragged the engineer about 80 feet before he fell to the ground.
