Findings released this month by the National Transportation Safety Board indicate a section of rail near Pueblo where a coal train jumped the tracks and crashed onto Interstate 25 last year had broken before the fatal crash.
The derailment caused the rail bridge over I-25 to collapse, dropping six railcars onto the freeway and killing 60-year-old truck driver Lafollette Henderson, who was traveling underneath the bridge at the time.
The NTSB documents include analyses of three segments of rail taken from the site as well as interviews with BNSF Railway workers and other investigative findings.
According to the agency, video recovered from the lead locomotive shows the damaged track ahead of the coal train moments before the Oct. 15, 2023, crash.
NTSB investigators recounted the history of inspections of railway infrastructure near the derailment. The track near Milepost 109.654, where the train derailed, was inspected twice in the week prior to the crash by BNSF, on Oct. 9 and Oct. 11. Both times, no defective conditions were recorded.
Although the company reported inspecting the track a third time on Oct. 13, investigators found that “there was an error in the reporting,” and the inspection had, in fact, stopped before Milepost 109.654.
A BNSF test vehicle traveling on the track Oct. 15 shortly before the derailment noted a “yellow-tag condition not requiring immediate action,” referring to an irregularity in the surface of the rail, that was first recorded in August 2023, investigators said.
They added that the observation did not fall under federal regulations and was a part of internal quality-control metrics used by BNSF.
The bridge structure had last been inspected in 2021. Previous inspections in 2020 and 2019 noted “old hit damage” and cracking of the girder of the bridge.
NTSB investigators also observed fractures in the segments of rail collected from the site and evaluated thermite welds made in 2007 and May 2023 by BNSF employees, noting that the rail including the older weld “showed (signs) of sudden catastrophic failure.”
According to investigators, BNSF estimated the damage to the track totaled $10.4 million, while mechanical damages were more than $2.3 million.
BNSF spokeswoman Kendall Sloan wrote in an email that the company routinely inspects its rail infrastructure using “a combination of rail detection testing, advanced track infrastructure testing and visual inspections,” including the Oct. 15 trip taken by the test vehicle.
“All that being said, we are committed to continuous improvement and will carefully consider the NTSB’s final report and recommendations when they come out to more fully understand what lessons can be learned from this incident,” Sloan said.
Jennifer Gabris, an NTSB spokeswoman, said the probable cause of the crash would be publicly disclosed at the conclusion of the agency’s investigation and included in its final report, which she said typically takes one to two years to prepare.