In the News

Aron Nsengiyunva did what little boys do when the ball they’re playing with slips past them. He ran to get it, even though it had rolled under a train that stood motionless on the tracks next to his East Side home. But then the train started moving, and the 9-year-old boy found himself pinned beneath it.

Jeffrey Dees did what some people who live in that neighborhood do when a motionless train stands in the way of their trip home. He climbed between two train cars to get to the other side. But then that train started moving – and Dees, like Aron, lost a leg as a result.

Tyrina Mozee tried crossing the railroad tracks a block from the CSX Corp.’s Buffalo rail yard. There, a train struck and killed her.

No railroad engineer saw any of the three Buffalo residents maimed by a freight train in the past 28 months within six short blocks of each other, just west of the CSX rail yard at Bailey Avenue and Broadway – because those trains didn’t need anyone on board to operate them.

Railroads like CSX Corp. have used remote-control technology to move trains in and around their rail yards for decades. In recent years, though, in Buffalo and elsewhere across the country, those routine railroad switching operations have occasionally ended in tragedy.

And those tragedies have prompted a federal review of remote-control rail operations as well as concern in Congress and among city leaders nationwide.

“The question is always: What are the guardrails for safety?” said Brittney D. Kohler, legislative director for transportation and infrastructure at the National League of Cities.

A common crossing

There are no guardrails where Wick Street dead ends at the railroad tracks, where Aron chased his ball under a train that would nearly kill him. There’s no fencing there that could prevent pedestrians from crossing. There’s no safety signage, either.

A similar situation exists at other East Side streets that stop at the railroad tracks west of the CSX rail yard. And there’s no safe way to get past those tracks other than to walk east to an overpass on Bailey Avenue or west to an overpass on Goodyear Avenue – a walk that is as long as a half mile for pedestrians who stick to the city streets.

Neighborhood residents said it’s common to see people crossing the tracks at several dead-end streets to visit a nearby grocery store, Emerson Park or Harvey Austin Middle School.

“They come back this way and then across to go to Broadway, whoever, you know, back and forth,” said Odell Peak, 57, who does the same thing three times a week to visit his grandchildren.

To hear railroad officials tell it, people like Peak – as well as the people in Buffalo who have been injured or killed when a remote-controlled train started moving – are to blame.

“The incidents you refer to in Buffalo are an unfortunate reminder of the very real dangers of trespassing on railroad property,” said Austin Staton, a CSX spokesman.

A long recovery

Aron chased that ball under a CSX train in June of last year. His sister, Esther Iradukunda, said she was in the family home, getting ready for dinner, when she suddenly heard her young brother screaming.

Iradukunda ran outside to see Aron trapped beneath the train, which had started moving when he tried to retrieve his ball. She ran to help him, only to see the train start moving again. Finally she was able to pull him out from under the train and carry the severely injured boy home.

Aron spent the next six months in Oishei Children’s Hospital, enduring several surgeries to repair severe damage to his abdomen as well as the amputation of his shattered right leg.

He’s back with his family now, in a new home far from the train tracks. He hangs out with children in the neighborhood, maneuvering the sidewalks on crutches.

Aron’s father, Karamira Ngendahimana, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, filed a lawsuit last week against CSX and the City of Buffalo, accusing them of negligence for leaving the train tracks so easily accessible.

Ngendahimana said through an interpreter that he can’t understand why CSX hasn’t erected a fence to prevent people from going from Wick Street – the site of the accident – onto the train tracks.

And he said he was shocked to hear that the train was operated not by an engineer in the cab at the front of the train but by a remote-control operator. That, he said, meant there was no one from CSX nearby to hear Aron’s screams.

“If the train is going, they should have a driver in front, maybe another one at the back,” Ngendahimana said.

Asked via email if that would have made any difference, Staton, of CSX, did not answer the question. Instead, he reiterated the dangers of trespassing on railroad property and said: “It was an unfortunate tragedy, and our sincere thoughts continue to be with this family.”

A changing industry

For decades, many routine rail switching operations have been conducted without an engineer on board.

Starting in the 1970s, remote-control locomotive technology has allowed railroads to assemble trains from outside the train’s cab. Instead, a remote-control operator who may or may not be on the train can move a train back and forth with a computer-connected device.

The Federal Railroad Administration certifies those remote-control operators, who sometimes work in pairs. And while those remote operations originally occurred largely within rail yards, they increasingly occur in nearby “remote-control zones” that in Buffalo and other cities cut through neighborhoods.

Remote-control locomotives lack a key rail safety feature that other trains have had since the inception of railroading: eyes and ears. However, Staton said CSX has video cameras inside the cab of most locomotives and at multiple locations throughout most rail yards.

To hear rail industry officials tell it, remote-control locomotives don’t pose a safety risk. Instead, they reduce the risk of human error, said Jessica Kahanek, assistant vice president for communications at the Association of American Railroads.

“You’re minimizing some of the opportunity for miscommunication or challenges” between railroad employees, Kahanek said.

Accidents elsewhere

The Federal Railroad Administration backed the move to remote-control operations in rail yards. In a 2004 report, the agency said its research showed that remote-control trains resulted in fewer accidents and injuries than conventional rail yard operations.

Much has happened more recently, though.

In Houston last year, authorities found Javier Avila-Figueroa dead on the tracks of a Union Pacific train operated by remote control, the New York Times reported.

In a rail yard near Toledo, Ohio, last September, a rail yard worker for CSX, Frederick Anderson, was killed when he got pinned between the cars of a train operated by remote control.

And in July in Niagara Falls, a CSX locomotive derailed in Niagara Falls, destroying a residential garage. Staton, of CSX, said the train was not operating remotely at the time − but that it was being operated manually by two conductors who were not authorized to do so, as an engineer would have been.

The engineers union, which has jobs at stake as the use of remote-control trains expands, has been the loudest critic of those operations. And James P. Louis, the union’s Buffalo-based national vice president, explained the union’s concerns on a visit to Wick Street, where Aron chased that ball under a train and lost a leg as a result.

“There’s not somebody here watching what’s going on,” Louis said. “There’s no second set of eyes here. In this case, there were no eyes whatsoever.”

Another leg lost

The scene is much the same two blocks to the west at Koons Avenue, where Dees, 41, was injured.

According to a lawsuit Dees filed in State Supreme Court, there once was a fence blocking access to the railroad tracks on the north side of Koons Avenue. But the fence was gone on that day in May 2022 when Dees, exhausted after a day of work, lifted his bike and climbed between two idle rail cars on a train parked at that intersection.

Suddenly, the train started moving. Dees said he jumped off the train and tried to retrieve his bike, only to fall and get his left leg stuck under the train.

Witnesses called 911, and Dees was rushed to Erie County Medical Center, where doctors found they had no choice but to amputate part of his leg.

Dees said the incident upended his life. And he worries that his life won’t be the only one upended by a remote-control train accident.

“I’ve seen people just nonchalantly cross that track – I mean, kids,” he said. “There’s a football field right there.”

Calls for change

Given the frequency of pedestrian accidents on the rail tracks in Buffalo and elsewhere, calls for change are echoing in Washington.

The Federal Railroad Administration is reviewing remote operations.

“As a regulator, we’d be remiss if we were not paying close attention to these types of operations when there had been casualties,” said Warren Flatau, senior public affairs specialist at the rail agency.

Federal regulations prohibit remote-control trains from traveling more than 15 miles per hour, and they are barred from carrying hazardous materials.

And while remote operations originally occurred primarily in rail yards, “there are reports and observations out there that they’re using (remote-control locomotives) further and further outside the yard limits,” Flatau said.

Rep. Tim Kennedy, a Buffalo Democrat, has pressed the railroad agency to investigate remote rail operations and, in a letter, pressed CSX to stop remote operations near residential or commercial areas.

“CSX needs to step up and invest in themselves and in freight rail across this country before someone else gets injured or killed, or there’s more destruction of property, or we have another environmental disaster,” Kennedy said.

A life lost

Kahanek, however, agreed with CSX that those incidents, while tragic, stem from trespassing.

“Trespassing is an issue, and always has been an issue, regardless of remote-control technology being used for powering the train or more conventional locomotive usage,” Kahanek said. She noted that trespassing and grade-crossing incidents account for 95% of the nation’s railroad fatalities.

Kahanek also said fences wouldn’t minimize the number of trespassers getting injured or killed on the rails.

“When railroads have put fencing in, it is very common for it to immediately be cut in the neighborhoods,” she said.

According to a lawsuit filed in State Supreme Court in August by the estate of Mozee, she used a gap in the fencing at Gatchell Street, a block from the rail yard, to try to cross onto the tracks late on the night of Feb. 16. Local residents frequently use that gap in the fence to cross the tracks, the lawsuit said.

Mozee didn’t make it. Authorities found her lifeless body later that night.

Thomas P. Kotrys, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit, declined to comment for this story, as did several members of Mozee’s family.

The lawsuit accuses CSX of negligence, and of “failing to implement the minimal standards necessary to assure the protection and well-being of pedestrians and the general public.”