"Raining Fasteners" Beneath Chicago’s "L" Train

June 19

00:00 2014

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FEATURE
“Raining Fasteners” Beneath Chicago’s “L” Train

Courtesy Chicago Tribune

MEDIA SPOTLIGHT: A Chicago cabby received the shock of her life recently while driving under the “L” tracks in search of a fair.
“All of a sudden, iron rails and wood and debris were falling from the tracks and they bounced off my cab,” Joellen Tobias told the Chicago Tribune. “It was the most frightening thing I was ever under because it was hitting the front, it was hitting the top, it was hitting the back.

“I’m just looking for fares, doing my thing and then, ‘Boom, boom, boom.’ It never stopped. I didn’t know what to do, it was like a sci-fi movie.”

Above her, an Orange Line train reportedly had derailed, pulling out steel rail fasteners and causing them rain down on the street below, according to transit officials.

CTA spokesman Brian Steele told the Tribune the curved steel fasteners fit into the brackets like dead-bolts and that it’s rare for them to be dislodged during a derailment.

“I’m watching the train continue on and its going pop, pop, bing, bing, pop, pop all the way down Van Buren,” she said. “It was like raining nails. It didn’t break the windows but it damaged the cab, there are dings all over it.”

Fellow Chicagoan Joseph WIlliams was waiting in his Lincoln Town Car to pick up his wife when the fasteners started falling.

“When it first hit the car, it sounded like a gunshot,” the 65-year-old U.S. Navy veteran told the Tribune. “It was like I was in Vietnam again.”

He noticed dozens of the fasteners on cars, on the sidewalk and on the street.

“It was traumatic because I didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “If one of those clamps would have fallen on anybody, they would have gotten hurt because they were awful heavy.”

Lance Lewis was driving a 2005 Toyota Camry on Van Buren when the metal debris began to fall. “The city really dodged a bullet because someone could have been really hurt.”

Maintenance crews reportedly finished repairs by 1:30 a.m., returning service to normal by the morning commute.

Editor’s Note: Articles in Media Spotlight are excerpts from publications or broadcasts, which show the industry what the public is reading or hearing about fasteners and fastener companies.

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