With the nation’s attention focused for the moment on railroad safety, particularly the toxic chemical spill of the February 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern Railway freight train near East Palestine, OH—an accident that involved several cars carrying five different hazardous materials—it’s fitting that we take a look at the safety protocols and history of our own regional railroad. The 123-mile rail line that runs within the Delaware River corridor is currently owned by Norfolk Southern Railway. This is the second in a series of articles that explores agencies involved, responsibilities and protocols for railroad safety and emergency management.

A trip through history

The first recorded derailment in the Upper Delaware River corridor occurred on July 15, 1864 and was tabbed by the Civil War-era press as “The Great Shohola Train Wreck,” a deadly disaster that claimed the lives of many butternut-clad Confederate prisoners of war, and several of their “Yankee” guards in blue.

Based on information from Sullivan County Historian John Conway and by Laurie Ramie, the executive director of the Upper Delaware Council (UDC), along with contemporary newspaper reports, the list of derailments in the river corridor spans several decades and involves numerous rail carriers.

—February 13, 1907. Three crew members were killed and a total of 12 passengers and crew were injured when an Ontario and Western passenger train went off the tracks near Hurleyville, NY;

—September 1, 1915. “Traffic on the east end of the Delaware Division of the Erie (Railroad) was tied up for several hours at Mongaup, which was due to the tearing up and blocking of both tracks, due to the derailment of several cars.”

—January 31, 1965. A $1 million wreck involved two Erie Lackawanna freight trains at Rundle’s Curve about three miles from Port Jervis, NY.

— Late December, 1974. The Erie Lackawanna derailment, which a New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) official stated at the time was caused by “a broken rail.” It resulted in 33 cars jumping the tracks near Lordville, NY. At the time, this was the fifth reported derailment on the local Erie Lackawanna line, including derailments on January 13 and March 16. DOT inspector John T. Devine was quoted as saying that the latter was caused by “improper rail surface,” on a section just west of Callicoon, NY.

A United States Railroad Administration (USRA) spokesperson stated that derailments on bankrupt lines (like the Erie Lackawanna) were likely caused by deferred maintenance “in anticipation of federal subsidies,” a reality that still raises concerns in 2023.

More recent history

On August 19, 1999, 10 out of 32 NYS&W train cars on Norfolk Southern’s tracks derailed when engineers made what was called a “panic stop” for an unexplained red signal light at Nobody’s Station north of Narrowsburg, NY; and on October 12, 2005, nine out of 127 cars of a NYS&W train came off the rails at Parker’s Glen in Shohola Township. This, in Ramie’s words, resulted in “the engineers walking away from the wreckage, but leaving the consist [the manifest of what is in each rail car] behind, to the consternation of emergency response officials who couldn’t immediately determine what type of freight the train carried.”

The most recent river corridor derailment occurred on August 9, 2018, in which 15 rail cars out of a 63-car NYS&W freight train derailed above the Hale Eddy bridge, near the Town of Deposit, NY at 2:01 a.m.

The New York State Department of Conservation (NYS DEC) reported at the time that a large percentage of the train’s 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel leaked into the river, and a reddish-brown color and distinctive odor was later noted as far south on the main stem as far as Lordville, NY.

This latest incident pointed out a lack of communication and notification, as authorities of the National Park Service’s Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River (UPDE) were not directly informed of the derailment and resultant spill.

In light of this incident, the UDC sent letters to Melanie Boyer, public affairs officer of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway/Central New York Railroad strongly recommending updating the Emergency Response Guide (ERG) for the Upper Delaware River Valley, Southern Tier Line from Port Jervis to Deposit, NY (dated 1997, and previously referred to in part of this series).

This document, as reported in Part 1 of this series, was commissioned by the UDC as a collaboration between the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail, the existing Class I railroad carrier at the time), the Delaware Riverkeeper, with support from the National Park Service (NPS) and the UDC, as a list of emergency contacts, and was “not intended as a comprehensive planning document.”

In the first letter dated October 26, 2018, Ramie outlined the need to update the original document, noting that the UDC is a nonprofit organization which represents 13 communities in Delaware, Sullivan, Orange (NY) and Wayne and Pike counties (PA), “that border the federally designated Upper Delaware Scenic & Recreational River, along with the State of New York, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the Delaware River Basin Commission, sitting on our board, works in partnership with the National Park Service to implement the goals and objectives of the River Management Plan for the 73.4 mile-long river corridor.”

Ramie stressed the importance of several issues, including “convening a meeting of the involved parties as soon as possible,” focused on the railroad’s commitment, formatting a new guide, collecting information and creating training opportunities.

In a subsequent follow-up letter to the NYS&WR dated August 19, 2020 the UDC again cited the need to revise the original ERG. The letter stated, “The guide is over 20 years old and should be replaced; it should function similar to emergency operations plans, following the National Incident Management System with local agencies through their 911 dispatch centers and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) National Response Center to encompass the non-tidal Delaware River mainstem and its three Wild and Scenic Pennsylvania tributaries.”

“Effective interagency and community-wide communications related to situational awareness must occur... proactive measures (are) needed to protect life and property downriver warrants substantive review, improvement, and a new cooperative communication mechanism,” Ramie wrote.

Noting that a grant to rewrite the guide was approved in 2020 after a COVID-related delay, Ramie said the local organization was invited to participate, along with several environmental protection agencies and first responders in a series of table-top exercises geared toward dealing with train derailments and their aftereffects.

“The next step in the process is an on-site drill, planned for the spring of 2023,” she said, noting that the proposed hazardous materials spill disaster scenario would stage a simulated derailment near Sparrowbush, NY, “involving an oil spill in the river,” combined with rail cars on fire.