 It is roughly 7.50 in the morning on the 24th of March 1972 and a school bus is driving collecting students for Nyak High School. This morning, although clear and sunny, he is a little bit different for the driver. He has had to do his regular route in reverse due to a road closure. As his bus makes its way along the Gilchrist Road, he is heading for a railway crossing. 20 minutes later than normal and due to having to do his pickups in reverse, the bus is a whole lot fuller. Almost overloaded in fact, with some students having to stand in the aisle instead of sit on their seats. The bus seemingly unaware of the crossing storms over the railway tracks, right into the path of the freight train. Welcome to Plainly Difficult, my name is John and today exploring Gilchrist Road Disaster. Clarkstown. Clarkstown is, well, a town in New York State in Rockwell County. It is made up of several hamlets and has a population today of just under 90,000 residents. And it is a pretty standard residential area, nothing really out of the ordinary. Very nice homes, plenty of places to shop and eat, not too far from the hustle and bustle of New York City and on the whole looks like a nice place to live. The town, also not unusually, has a railway line that snakes its way through it. It's a single track affair and predominantly is used for freight, as such most of its crossings are at grade on the same level as the road traffic. The line was ran by Penn Central. This of course opens it up to conflict points where cars and trains might interface, or in a more technical term, go smashy smash. Along this line in 1972, roughly eight trains run in each direction each day, with one usually traversing the line between 7 and 8am. The trains can run along the line at speeds up to 40mph and it probably goes without saying that freight trains take a lot of distance to stop. So yielding at the crossings is the responsibility of road use. Because of the low frequency of trains and relatively minor roads, they had very little in the form of crossing protection and warning systems. Pretty much boiling down to cross-bucks, which is this sign, and stop markings to tell cars to stop, then proceed across the line. This was the case for the crossing at Gilcrest Road. The one lane in each direction only had a couple hundred of cars used a day road each day. Even today, the road looks quiet and almost rural. Going west, vehicles are limited to 15mph, but eastbound have no restrictions. As such, they can approach the crossing at 30mph. As far as known by the 1970s, the crossing was incident free, with no reported police action or reports from train crews. Of course, that doesn't make it immune to future disasters. The morning of the 24th of March 1972. It is 7.30am and a school bus driver aged 37 is preparing his bus to depart the garage. He is a fireman by day and moonlight is a bus driver some days of the week. His bus is a GM derived chassis vehicle and has 66 seats. He has been driving buses for around 6 years. He usually departs around 7.30 in the morning and returns at 8.25 in the morning. From there, he speeds off to New York City to start his shift as a fireman, which is around 9am. Shortly after departing, he comes across a diversion this morning. This required him to do his route and pickups in reverse of normal. This would take longer. Not good when you've got another job to go off to. By the time the bus reaches Gilcrest it's full with children, some 48 in number and some are even having to stand in the aisle. Normally the bus approaches the railway crossing heading westbound, but today he's going east and is 20 minutes later than normal. This was around 7.54 in the morning and the bus was chugging along the Gilcrest Road. Roughly around the same time freight train WV1 was heading north. The train consists of 3 GE UB25B diesel electric locomotives and 83 wagons and a caboose. It weighed around 4,200 tonnes. The lead loco was painted a very dark green and the train was crewed with 5. An engineer, breakman and fireman in the lead loco and a conductor and flagman in the caboose. The time is now 7.55. Train WV1 is travelling at around 25 miles an hour and it is approaching the Gilcrest Road. As per instructions and the whistle post the train blows on the horn. Its bell is also ringing and its headlight is on. Roughly 500 feet south of the crossing the train emerges from a row of trees and the crew and the cab spot a yellow school bus approaching traveling eastbound roughly 480 feet west of the crossing. The bus doesn't appear to be slowing down but continuing on an even pace. Children aboard the bus at this time see the train and start shouting at the driver. At roughly 220 feet from the crossing the school bus momentarily slows down but picks up speed yet again. We can guess that the driver maybe thought he could beat the train as being stuck at the crossing would take too much time. A few more seconds passed and the train was roughly 150 feet from the crossing. Seeing the bus wasn't looking like it would stop the engineer slammed on the train's brakes. The impact was inevitable by now as both vehicles reached the crossing the train slammed into the school bus's side. This was slap bang in the middle and on its right hand side of the vehicle. The rear section of the bus was torn away pushing it towards the western side of the crossing landing upside down. The main section was pushed along the track a further 1,100 feet. Some students in the impact were thrown from the bus. In the initial impact three students Jimmy McGinnis aged 17 Richard McAlo aged 18 and Bobby Maltier aged 14 were killed instantly. 45 students were rushed to hospital with varying levels of injuries. Some would require amputation of limbs and life-saving treatment. The bus drivers also rushed to hospital with serious but not life-threatening injuries. Two more would die. 14 year old Thomas Gross and 16 year old Stephen Ward. Luckily no one aboard the train was injured likely due to the bus taking the brunt of the impact. Needless to say such an event would spark outrage in the community rightfully aimed at the bus driver and the design of the level crossing. It's also then unsurprising that the NTSB would be the ones to undertake the investigation. The agency would examine the accident site, the bus wreckage and the train as well as the driver's actions and sadly it would dig up some worrying driving habits of the bus driver after math. The NTSB pulled over the bus wreckage and the barely damaged train and they found that nothing was mechanically defective. Interviews with passengers the bus driver had previously driven gave a rather worrying picture. His drive style was described as sometimes dangerous and he often took risks. This was likely due to his need to get to his day job after driving a bus. There had been a complaint even made by a parent about his driving. The way the school buses were run in the area was via contractors and as such the driver wasn't hired directly by the school district instead by a bus company. The company also selected the routes and it didn't consider the risk of including the crossing on the scheduled journey the driver had to make. The driver did have the relevant license at the time a class 2 chauffeur ticket. Although the driver clearly was the cause of the disaster, the crossing also played its part by not having barriers. You see with just a stop marking, cross bucks and the warning horns of the train, you open the opportunity of someone trying to beat it before it gets to the crossing. Potentially if there was a physical barrier then the bus may have stopped but the NTSB found that the crossing was missing one of its cross bucks and the advance warning sign was also too close. The NTSB advised implementing better crossing controls as well as better training to school bus drivers. They also noted that better school bus route selection should be undertaken to avoid as much as possible using unprotected level crossings. The driver of the school bus refused to speak to the NTSB during the investigation. This was on the advice of his lawyer because he had a criminal case to answer to. The driver would be taken to trial and would be found guilty of negligent homicide and he was given five years probation. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative comms actuation share like licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me John and are currently very nice and sunny corner of southern London UK. 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