BNSF Railway No. 9159 is an SD70ACe type diesel locomotive built by Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) in January 2008 for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF). As of today, it is still in regular freight service with the BNSF, but it was renumbered to 8749.
On April 17, 2011, it was involved in a collision with a maintenance-of-way equipment train in Red Oak, IA. On that day, it was the lead locomotive of a coal train, consisting of 132 loaded coal gondolas, BNSF ES44AC No. 6133 as the trailing locomotive, and BNSF SD70ACe No. 9226 as a distributed power unit (DPU) at the back of the train. The maintenance-of-way train was being operated by BNSF SD70MAC No. 9470. The coal train was directed to stop directly behind the maintenance-of-way train, but instead, the coal train proceeded through several red signals. It was also discovered that the alerter was reset every two minutes indicating that the crew was awake, but they must have dozed off because they took no action to stop their train, even though they could see tail end of the maintenance-of-way train directly in front of them. At around 6:55 am, the coal train rear-ended the back of the maintenance-of-way train going about 23 MPH. 9159 buried itself under the top of the flatcars, which in turn piled on top of it. The engineer and the conductor were both killed and the accident caused millions of dollars in damage. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that although the crew was awake, they were half asleep, only being aware enough to reset the alerter every two minutes and not pay attention to what's ahead of them on the line.
After the accident, 9159 was eventually repaired and put back into service with the BNSF, but after its repairs, it was renumbered to 8749. The reason for this is unclear and this marks one of the only times that the BNSF has renumbered one of their locomotives due to its involvement in an accident. The trailing locomotive, 6133, was also repaired and the DPU locomotive, 9226, was undamaged since it was the DPU at the back of the train, far away from the accident.
Trivia[]
- The accident that BNSF 9159 was involved in is also known as the BNSF 9159 incident.
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