Khurram Saeed

ksaeed@lohud.com

The Metro-North Railroad engineer who sped off the tracks last December causing a deadly derailment in the Bronx had exceeded the speed limit several times on the Hudson Line in the week before the crash, a federal analysis released Friday shows.

Using event recorder data, investigators found that William Rockefeller went over the speed limit by at least 5 mph 14 times during four of six runs in the last week of November. Precise information about how fast he was going on those occasions was not included in the 46 documents released Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The NTSB is investigating the Dec. 1 derailment that killed four people, including Jim Lovell, 58, of Cold Spring and James Ferrari, 59, of Montrose, and injured dozens. There were an estimated 115 people on board.

On that day, Rockefeller's train was traveling at 82 mph when it flew off a curve that had a 30 mph speed limit. Rockefeller told investigators he had fallen into a trance-like state and he was later found to have suffered from severe sleep apnea that went undiagnosed before the derailment.

The NTSB expects to issue its final report on the cause of the crash next month.

In January, representatives from the NTSB, Metro-North and the Federal Railroad Administration analyzed event recorder data from various locomotives on the Hudson Line prior to the December derailment. A random sample of trains operated by engineers other than Rockefeller found speeding at different locations between Grand Central Terminal and Poughkeepsie.

Of the 18 runs reviewed from Nov. 16 to Nov. 30, there were 20 speeding incidents over nine runs. Those trains went from 5 mph to 12 mph over the posted speed limit, including in some spots where trains were allowed to travel as fast as 80 mph.

Metro-North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said "much has changed" in the past 10 months.

"Since then, Metro-North has implemented an aggressive speed compliance program, including more random downloads, more radar checks and more on-board supervision," Anders said. "It has been very effective in reducing overspeed events."

In August, she said the railroad conducted 79 speed checks by radar and 86 event recorder downloads. Of these 165 tests, there was one speeding incident which was less than 10 mph over the limit. There are also signal-enforced restrictions now in place that automatically slow trains at curves and bridges.

Metro-North President Joseph Giulietti has spent much of the year stressing safety. He has lowered on-time performance goals, which were once a hallmark and source of pride for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority commuter railroad.

Another document released by the NTSB on Friday listed the crews' cellphone calls and texts and appeared to confirm that the engineer and conductors were not using phones at the time of the crash. The FRA said earlier there was no evidence the crash had anything to do with phone use.

Other documents reported on the condition of the derailed Metro-North cars. There were blood-stained seats, floors and doors. Several rail cars lost almost all their windows on one side and were littered with dirt, rocks and even tree branches when they came to rest.

The new documents include a quote from a New York City police detective who entered one of the damaged cars right after the accident.

"There was people's personal items and there was people laying around," he told the NTSB. "There was not one window left on the train."

In a document relating to an accident in March, the Metro-North engineer on a train that killed an electrician on the tracks in Manhattan told investigators that the electrician never looked up despite the fact that he was blowing the train's horn.

William Maher said he was coming out of a tunnel when he noticed three workers too close to the track. He said two got out of the way, but one, later identified as James Romansoff, 58, of Yonkers, leaned or fell into the train's path.

Maher told investigators that track workers used to stop what they were doing when a train approached, acknowledge the engineer, and go back to work once the train passed. He said most workers now continue what they are doing without ever looking up.

"To me," he said, "that's a little discomforting."

The Associated Press contributed information to this article.

Twitter: @ksaeed1