RAIL

8 September 2022: Imperial County, California

On September 8, 2022, about 2:40 a.m. local time, a conductor and engineer of Union Pacific Railroad (UP) train ISILB5-07 were killed when the train collided with railcars stored in a siding near Imperial County, California. The train was traveling eastbound about 28 mph on Mainline 2 when a UP dispatcher routed it into the west end of the signal-controlled siding (Bertram siding) at milepost 646.1 on the Yuma subdivision. The train then collided with 92 empty intermodal railcars that had been stored at milepost 646.3 since December 2021. The two lead locomotives and one intermodal railcar of UP train ISILB5-07 derailed, along with two of the empty stored intermodal railcars.