Graniteville train crash
2005 rail disaster in Graniteville, South Carolina
The Graniteville train crash was an American rail disaster that occurred on January 6, 2005, in Graniteville, South Carolina. At 2:39 am EST, two Norfolk Southern freight trains collided near the Avondale Mills plant in Graniteville. Nine people were killed and over 250 people were treated for toxic chlorine exposure. The crash was determined to be caused by a misaligned railroad switch.
Crash
On January 5, 2005, NS local train P22 (led by GP59 #4622) began its daily operation. The regularly assigned conductor and engineer were both off duty on January 5, and the jobs were filled for the day from a list of available standby employees. At the end of their scheduled run, train P22's crew parked the train on a siding near the Avondale Mills plant. The train crew contacted the local train dispatcher at 7:53 and 7:54 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) to clear two track warrants that were protecting train P22's use of the tracks. Although the railroad switch for the Avondale Mills siding was supposed to be set for mainline operation before P22's crew departed for the night, the train's brakeman later told the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that he was "not 100 percent sure" he had aligned the switch for mainline operation, and that he "might have made a mistake." No train operated through the area or used the affected tracks for the rest of the day.
“Graniteville train crash” enters the record as 2005 rail disaster in Graniteville, South Carolina. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Graniteville, train and crash can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Graniteville train crash” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.