TRAIN WRECK, TRUE STORY OF THE SILVER SPRING, MD COMMUTER RAIL/ AMTRAK DISASTER

Description

First published in 2011, this is a new, updated second edition just off the presses last week. Each copy will be especially inscribed to the buyer by the author. High quality trade paperback, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" (239 pages)
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On a snowy, February afternoon, three seasoned railroad men, an engineer and two conductors, were running a daily Maryland (MARC) commuter train with student passengers from Brunswick, Maryland into Washington, D.C. At 5:35 they were only 11 miles from their destination at Union Station. Down the tracks and around a bend, a massive Amtrak passenger train was slowly rolling up the line toward them, finally underway on its route to Pittsburgh after being delayed in Washington for over an hour. Although there were two sets of tracks on this CSX mainline, both trains were approaching each other on the same one.
That was temporary. The dispatcher had already arranged to get them on separate tracks by opening a crossover switch ahead. The day seemed to be  closing quietly and insignificantly, but for a number of small, time-altering glitches that had been lining up over the past hours like stars in their courses (three in the last few minutes alone) -- an unscheduled station stop for a lady who had gotten on a wrong train, a distraction and an oversight -- to curse the odds and lock the MARC train's impossible fate into place like gold bells rotating one by one on the screen of a jackpot slot machine. Some kind of collision was set, but the severity of what happened could have been avoided if one more second had been added to the daily clock. Instead, the ending was so horrific that it shocked Baltimore and Washington area residents and elicited prayers from both the White House and the halls of Congress.
An hour by hour, minute by minute dive into the perfect storm of passenger rail accidents.
Interwoven with the background stories of the engineers and conductors, the historic Baltimore and Ohio line, the classic railroad town of Brunswick, Maryland, the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue teams, and a guide on how to operate the massive locomotives ---- the braking systems and the signals that are supposed to keep trains safely apart.