00:00Railroading in dark territory always has its risks. Without signals to follow, all you can rely on are track warrants, and you better read those carefully, because if you don't, it could cause a catastrophic disaster.
00:14And that's exactly what happened in Texas 15 years ago, which came to be known as the Gunter train collision.
00:22On May 19, 2004, two BNSF ROC trains were running in opposite directions on the X Frisco Line, just north of Dallas, Texas.
00:38The southernmost point on that subdivision was Irving, Texas, where the northbound train left from.
00:44Its callsign was BNSF 6351 North, and the power was four SD40-2s.
00:526351 Leading, formerly Santa Fe 5036, FURX Lease Unit 8099, a former BN locomotive, and another lease unit from First Union Rail, 3052, which was ex-Canadian Pacific, and finally another BNSF SD40-2 7806.
01:13As mentioned earlier, this line was in dark territory, or in other words, unsignaled territory.
01:19According to 6351 North's track warrant, it had priority over another rock train, a southbound.
01:26The callsign for this train was BNSF 6789 South.
01:31The power consisted of three locomotives.
01:34The leader was SD40-2, you guessed it, 6789, an ex-Santa Fe GP60M 142, and yet another BNSF SD40-2 7138.
01:49The point on the line where the trains were scheduled to pass was Dorchester Siding, which was around milepost 657.7.
01:58The milepost numbers on this line went higher as you go further south toward Irving.
02:03The track warrant for 6789 South specifically read that it did not take effect until the arrival of 6351 North.
02:13Then, only after 6351 passed were they to proceed further south.
02:18The track warrant was either misread or ignored by the crew, because they proceeded past the south junction of Dorchester Siding,
02:25back onto the single-tracked main where 6351 was heading in the opposite direction on the same track.
02:32At milepost 661.9, both trains came into view, getting closer and closer to one another.
02:40And then...
02:41The trains collide head-on near the town of Gunter, four miles south of Dorchester Siding.
03:00The estimated combined speed was in excess of 60 miles an hour.
03:05In the chaos of the wreck, the engineer of 6789 was killed, while the other crew members of both trains suffered injuries.
03:13It didn't take very much time for the National Transportation Safety Board to find the smoking gun, which was the track warrant for 6789.
03:22If you look at box number 7, which says,
03:26Not in effect until after arrival of 6351 North at South Dorchester, you can see where the crew made an error.
03:35Although we don't really know how they made the error, or what contributed to it,
03:40whether they were asleep, drunk, tired, or something else, this tiny oversight cost the engineer his life.
03:49If 6789's crew read their track warrant more carefully, or alternatively, if the line was equipped with positive train control,
03:57the collision would have been prevented.
03:59But we can't just rely on computers to do all the work for us.
04:03After the wreck, 6351, and all the locomotives of the southbound train, which were 6789, 142, and 7138, were considered totaled and scrapped.
04:17The four other engines involved were repaired and returned to service, to continue their careers.
04:24Train crew's actions and inactions can result in deadly disasters.
04:29And it was 6789's crew's inactions, not reading their track warrant carefully enough, that puts them at fault with a Gunter train collision.
04:39Let's hope train crews of today have learned the mistakes of the crew of 6789, 15 years ago, so they know not to make those same mistakes again.
04:50So have they learned?
04:52Apparently not really.
04:54Because 11 years after that in 2015, in Georgia, a head-on collision on NS happened under very similar circumstances.
05:03So to make the railroads as safe as possible here in North America, shouldn't we just install signals everywhere and phase out track warrants entirely?
05:12Seems to me like that would be the best option.
