New York City's $1.9-Billion Rail Link Set Back By Deadly Crash
Investigators from the national Transportation Safety Board were working with New York City engineers last week to find out why a test train derailed Sept. 27, damaging part of a newly built guideway on the $1.9-billion Airtrain project to John F. Kennedy Airport and killing the operator. As of Oct. 1, they were examining the possibility that not securing blocks of concrete used to approximate live loads within the test cars contributed to the collision with the guideway retaining wall.
Kelvin DeBourgh Jr., 23, of Jamaica, Queens, was an employee of Bombardier Transportation, Montreal, part of the consortium that built and was testing the system for the owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The train, traveling at an unknown speed, rounded a curve of guideway on the airport fringe and crashed into the parapet, tearing open the front car and shearing away 150 ft of wall. DeBourgh was crushed.