Activities of Extra 7551 East.—At 5:00 p.m., on May 11, 1989, the chief train dispatcher on duty at Los Angeles, California, telephoned a yard clerk at Mojave (see figure 1) and informed him of plans to operate a train to haul the 69 cars of trona from Fleta to West Colton, near Los Angeles. At 9:00 p.m. that evening, a traincrew consisting of a locomotive engineer, a conductor, and a brakeman reported for duty at SP’s yard office in Bakersfield, California. At 9:15 p.m. while in the Bakersfield yard office, the conductor telephoned the yard clerk at Mojave and was told about the crew’s assignment to operate SP train MJLBP1-11 (designated Extra 7551 East) out of Mojave to haul 69 cars of trona. The crewmembers were transported in a company van from Bakersfield to Mojave where they arrived and entered the yard office at about 10:30 p.m. The crew picked up a clearance form, train orders, train list, and tonnage profile (the latter document is generated by the SP computer system and based, in part, on information in the car file) (appendix D), and departed the office. The documents provided to the crew indicated that the train consisted of 69 loaded cars with a trailing tonnage of 6,151 tons. The engineer testified that neither he nor the conductor had any concern about the paperwork received. The dispatcher on duty at 5:00 p.m. that day had arranged for the crew to take three locomotive units from the Mojave yard to Fleta (3 miles away) where they would couple onto the 69 cars assembled in the siding. They were to then pick up an additional locomotive unit at Palmdale Two (figure 1) to help in ascending the 2.2 percent grade to Hiland.
After departing the office, the crew proceeded to the yard to check out the three-unit locomotive consist. Between 11:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., the conductor called the yard clerk and informed him that locomotive unit SP 7551 was "dead-in-consist" and could not be started. The engineer testified that the crew attempted to determine the reason the unit would not start but was unsuccessful. The yard clerk instructed the crew to use another unit (SP 8278) that was in the yard next to the three-unit consist. The yard clerk then informed the assistant chief dispatcher, who had come on duty in Los Angeles at 10:30 p.m., of the condition of SP 7551 and of the use of SP 8278. The assistant chief dispatcher testified that he was concerned that with only three locomotive units the train could not take the 69 loaded hopper cars farther than Denis (see figure 1), and so he decided to alter the plan to supply locomotive power for Extra 7551 East that had been arranged by the dispatcher on the previous shift. Rather than have the crew pick up an additional locomotive unit at Palmdale Two, the assistant chief dispatcher arranged for a helper locomotive to move toward Mojave, meet Extra 7551 East at Oban, and assist the train up the ascending grade to Hiland and through the Cajon Pass.[1] The assistant chief dispatcher testified that he made this decision based on his belief that the tonnage of Extra 7551 East was about 8,900 tons, a figure that he calculated based on his experience with the product. He further testified that even though he had a copy of a yard list prepared by the yard clerks the previous week when they released the cars indicating a trailing tonnage of 6,151 tons, he believed that figure to be an estimated weight that would have been overridden when the bill of lading information was placed in the computer system. According to his testimony,
- ↑ The route through the mountains over which SP trains often operate.
