"Some planned safety work at fatal N.Y. train crash site was never performed" Associated Press February 07, 2015
NEW YORK —The third set of warning lights was proposed for a spot 100 to 200 feet from the crossing. It would have allowed drivers approaching around a slight bend to see the warning signals a few seconds sooner.
After numerous inquiries, state and railroad officials were unable to explain why the work on the lights wasn’t done. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.
As for whether the extra lights could have prevented the tragedy, state Transportation Department spokesman Beau Duffy said: ‘‘It’s way too early to be guessing about what could have or couldn’t have made a difference.’’
So who stole the $126,000?
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FLASHBACK:
"On Wednesday, witnesses, survivors, and investigators strained to
make sense of the fatal Metro-North Railroad crash in a New York suburb.
Moments before the crash, there was little sign of trouble. Riders had
settled into the relative calm of their Tuesday evening commutes —
texting, reading, listening to music, clustered at the crossing gate for
the tracks. At the front of the line was Ellen Brody, 49, a Greenburgh
resident and mother of three children, authorities said. She had left
the jewelry store where she worked around 6 p.m. and was en route to
Scarsdale to meet a friend, according to co-workers. It was dark, fellow
drivers recalled, and perhaps she did not know at first that she had
passed the gate. The gate struck the back passenger side edge of Brody’s
vehicle, according to Rick Hope, the driver behind her, then slid down
further and came to rest pressing in on the top of a window. The
vehicle, a Mercedes, appeared to be short of the tracks but inside the
gate, Hope said, before the crossing alarm began to blare. “As soon as I
see the gate go down, I back up,” Hope said outside his Yorktown
Heights home. “I say, ‘She’s going to back up as soon as she sees what’s
going on.’” But instead, Brody calmly got out of her car, Hope said.
She walked around the back, pushed up against the gate, and found it
wedged firmly in place. Hope said he began to panic, knowing a train
would come through in seconds. He said he motioned with his hands at
Brody to come toward him. He backed his car up more, thinking she might
follow his lead. For a split second, he said, she looked at him. He
thought she might walk away from the car. Instead she walked back to the
driver’s seat and climbed in. There was a pause, he said, as if she
were buckling her seat belt. “The thing’s dinging, red lights are
flashing, it’s going off,” Hope said. “I just remember going, ‘Hurry
up.’ I just knew she was going to back up — never in my wildest dreams did I think she’d go forward.”
