Railroad Vulnerabilities

[AdamG]

The switch, which was supposed to appear green, was showing a little red, said Mick Burkart, chief operating officer of the railroad.That posed a danger for eastbound trains. A westbound train was stopped while railroad officials inspected the switch.

When it became apparent that someone had tampered with a switching mechanism, the Guthrie County sheriff's office, state investigators and the FBI were contacted

Sandy Breault, a spokeswoman for the FBI, said there was no evidence it was a terrorist act.

"Just no reason to believe that right now," she said. The FBI is taking the lead in the investigation.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/art...fter-tampering

After the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound, we learned Al Qaeda was looking at sabotaging train tracks to derail a train. Now we're hearing somebody actually tried it in Iowa.

http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/traffic/trai...derail-attempt

"Someone could have been killed," Dennis Miller, the CEO of Iowa Interstate Railroad, told ABC News. "Ethanol won't explode," he said, "but it will burn." The trains running along those tracks, he said, often carry flammable ethanol, which they load at a nearby ethanol plant. Each train can carry up to 30,000 gallons of ethanol, "and 30,000 gallons would burn for a long time."

Miller said a lock was cut off a track switch box just outside Menlo, a town that sits along the rail line between Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Neb. The track was also "gapped open" about 2 inches, and a black bag was used to cover the switch signal so the tampering would be harder to notice. Miller said the switch tampering, and the creation of the gap in the tracks, clearly indicated to him that someone was trying to derail one of the 130-car trains that were running the track last Sunday.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/train...ry?id=13840108