FBI Probes Possible Sabotage in Train Wreck

Learning of a possibility of sabotage, the FBI has joined the investigation of the fatal freight train derailment in the Cajon Pass on Feb. 1, sources close to the case told The Times on Saturday.

“There is concern whether a signal was set improperly, or that it may have been tampered with,� one source said.

“The National Transportation Safety Board uncovered evidence as the wreckage was being cleared away,� the source added. “The NTSB asked the FBI to join the investigation.�

“They’ve seen something odd,� another source said. “They want the FBI to check it out.�

Until Saturday, investigators had said the sort of sabotage that caused the deadly derailment of an Amtrak passenger train in Arizona last fall had not been suspected in the Cajon Pass crash.

The Cajon Pass investigation had focused almost entirely on evidence that the brakes on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train had failed as the train started down a steep grade. The Federal Railroad Administration said it appeared that an air brake line on the train became blocked, and that a radio-controlled emergency bypass brake activation system had not been activated.

How a failed signal might have contributed to the accident was not immediately clear. Neither the FBI nor the NTSB would comment on the case Saturday night.

The freight train, which was carrying dangerous chemicals, apparently accelerated to between 50 mph and 60 mph--about four times the authorized speed--before plunging off the rails on a curve and bursting into flames, officials said. The conductor and a trainman were killed and the engineer was seriously injured. No one else was aboard the train.

Noxious fumes from ruptured tank cars wafted across nearby Interstate 15, prompting the closure of the highway--one of the principal motor routes through the mountains that ring the Los Angeles Basin--for about 36 hours. The highway was reopened, then closed again for another day after a tank car threatened to explode.

On Tuesday, the Federal Railroad Administration sharply criticized the railroad’s safety procedures and issued an emergency order requiring trains like the one that crashed to be equipped with the bypass system--in working order. That allows the engineer at the front of a train to apply the brakes at the rear of the train, even if there is a blockage in the air brake line.

Although the train that crashed was equipped with the system, investigators said, no one had pushed a button at the back of the train that activates the system before the train started down the grade. All three crewmen apparently were in the lead locomotive’s cab as the train careened down the pass separating the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.

Over the last six years, at least three other freight trains have broken loose while descending through the pass, killing six people and injuring more than 30.

In October, in a remote stretch of the Arizona desert about 65 miles southwest of Phoenix, someone pried loose a rail, sending Amtrak’s 12-car Sunset Limited passenger train plunging into a rock-strewn gully. A sleeping car attendant was killed and 78 other people were injured.

In December, FBI agents raided a rural home near Magic Mountain and detained John Ernest Olin, 32, a railroad salvage company executive, for several hours while agents searched his home for evidence in the Amtrak crash.

Olin, who denied any connection with the crash, was released, and no charges have been filed against him.