Tracks Open Again Day After Crash

BRYAN, Ohio (AP) — Federal investigators will attempt to recover data from a "black box" that might have recorded an engineer's actions before three freight trains collided on a busy Midwest route, killing two crew members.

Investigators have recovered three event recorders from the crash, which occurred about 2 a.m. Sunday and scattered railcars along a stretch of tracks about 50 miles west of Toledo.

All the recorders are from a westbound train that hit another, just before an eastbound train struck debris from the crash.

One of the recorders was damaged and another destroyed, but the third should note what the engineer did to adjust the train — changing engine speed, braking or any variation of power — before the crash, said Jay Kivowitz of the National Safety Transportation Board.

Yet regardless of what investigators learn, it will take from five to nine months before a report on the cause would be issued, he said.

"There's a lot of work done, and there's a lot of work to be done," Mr. Kivowitz said Monday night at a news conference in the nearby town of Napoleon. "If you try to jump to quick conclusions, you may miss the real cause."

The tracks, the mechanical condition of the trains, the crews' performance, railroad operating conditions, the signal system and weather will all be checked, he said.

Fog that limited visibility to a few feet might have contributed to the crash, but initial tests of computer and electronic signals designed to prevent trains from getting close revealed no problems, Mr. Kivowitz said.

Conrail said a train taking mail from Morrisville, Pa., to Chicago hit a train carrying trailers and containers from Boston to Chicago.

The eastbound train, with 50 empty cars, was traveling from Portage, Ind., to River Rouge, Mich., near Detroit.

Two crew members on the mail train, Roger Bell, 57, of Oregon, Ohio, and Raymond Corell, 52, of Angola, Ind., were killed.