The National Transportation Safety Board released reports Tuesday detailing the causes of five major Metro-North crashes over the past 18 months, including a derailment in Bridgeport and a collision that killed a worker in West Haven.
Investigators with the NTSB determined that a "broken pair of compromise joint bars" on the track likely caused the May 17, 2013 derailment in an area undergoing maintenance near the Bridgeport-Fairfield town line.
It happened moments after an engineer saw "an unusual condition on the track," according to a preliminary safety board report from last year.
At least 65 people were injured in the crash involving about 250 passengers, according to the report.
The safety board advised increased inspections of the tracks in response to the derailment.
Just over a week later, a 52-year-old foreman was killed when a Metro-North train hit him on a section of track in West Haven that was supposed to be out of service.
A student being trained on railroad controls misunderstood information about which tracks were clear and routed a train onto the track the foreman was on, according to the report.
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As a result of the West Haven fatality, the safety board recommended that Metro-North implement signaling procedures known as "shunting" to better alert trains where to stop on tracks and protect workers, according to the report.
Metro-North also designated a manager to approve all "blocking device application and removals" to make it clearer which tracks should be out of service.
Workers in the field can now use software to adjust signaling identifying which tracks should be out of service for their safety by entering a code specific to them. Training practices were also improved, now forbidding students from routing or blocking trains from tracks, according to the report. Students are now evaluated on a daily basis.
Another crash detailed in the report is the derailment of a New York train that resulted in the death of Metro-North electrician James Romansoff in Harlem, according to a news release from U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who joined U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, Rep. Jim Himes and Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch for a press conference Tuesday afternoon at the Bridgeport Metro-North station.
