The IronWood Guide to Railway Safety - FRA Accident/Injury Database

U.S. Federal Railroad Administration
Accident/Incident Database 1980-2001

Module 3: Rail Equipment Accidents/Incidents

This module of the database contains information provided by each railroad to the Federal Railroad Administration on Form F 6180-54. A railroad uses this form to report collisions, derailments, fires, explosions, acts of God, and other events involving the operation of on-track equipment (standing or moving) that caused more than $6,600 of reportable damage.

A form must be completed for each consist involved in an accident. The railroad responsible for the on-track equipment at the time of the accident, and only that railroad, will report the consist.

In joint operations, if the railroad having track maintenance responsibility did not also have on-track rail equipment involved, a report containing the track information must be forwarded. The items concerning the equipment consist are to be marked "N/A".

When total reportable damage to all railroads directly involved in an accident/incident exceeds the reporting threshold, each railroad must make a report even if that particular railroad's damages were below the threshold.

Track information for accidents occurring on industry track of a non-reporting company is reported by the railroad operating the on-track equipment. Damages to industry track and on-track equipment are included in reportable damage.

A railroad does not need to report the following:

Cars derailed on industry tracks by non-railroad employees or non-railroad employee vandalism, providing there is no involvement of railroad employees nor railroad track maintenance responsibility;
Damage to out-of-service cars resulting from high water or flooding, e.g., empties placed on storage or repair track. This exclusion does not apply if such cars are placed into a moving consist and as a result of this damage, a reportable rail equipment accident results.

All casualties resulting from a rail equipment accident are reported individually on Form FRA F 6180-55a (and therefore appears in the Railroad Injury and Illness Summary - Continuation module of this database). If the accident was a highway-rail crossing impact, a Form FRA F 6180-57 must also be completed by the railroad responsible for the consist (and therefore appears in the Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Accidents/Incidents module of this database).

The IGRA database contains the complete 100 fields of data on each of the 75,478 reportable rail equipment accidents/incidents that have occurred in the U.S. during the period 1980-2001.

Figure 1: The opening screen for the "Rail Equipment Accidents/Incidents" module of the database.

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