An incorrectly lined switch — the result of an error by a crew member of a train not involved in the incident — led to a collision between two trains at Union Pacific’s yard in Chico, TX, on April 16, 2023, the National Transportation Safety Board said in an investigation report released Nov. 21, 2024.
A contributing factor, the report says, was the inability of the dispatcher and train crew to determine the position of the switch in non-signaled territory in time to prevent the collision. Chico, on UP’s Duncan Subdivision, is about 50 miles northwest of Fort Worth, Texas.
The incident at 6:44 p.m. CT saw southbound grain train GSHFCC15 routed into a yard track where it struck parked train RDACO15 in Chico Yard. The grain train was moving at 49.8 mph when the engineer initiated an emergency brake application just before reaching the switch; it was still traveling at 36.7 mph at the time of the collision. [See “UP train was going 35 mph when it hit parked train …,”Trains News Wire, May 11, 2023.] Two crew members from the grain train were seriously injured, with one airlifted to a hospital.
Two locomotives and 12 loaded hopper cars from the three-engine, 103-car grain train, traveling from Hutchinson, Kansas, to Corpus Christi, Texas, derailed. Also derailed were two locomotives and one empty gondola from the 105-car parked train; no crew members were on board at the time of the collision. Damage was estimated at about $4.9 million.