By Railfan & Railroad Staff

The National Transportation Safety Board announced this week that its investigation into a Norfolk Southern train that derailed near Springfield, Ohio, on March 4 — one of a rash of wrecks on the Class I railroad this year — is indeed focusing on loose wheelsets found on newly built coil cars. 

According to the NTSB, NS train 179LC04 derailed near Springfield, on March 4, just before 5 p.m. The train was 212 cars long with five locomotives. Twenty-eight cars derailed resulting in millions of dollars in damage. No one was injured in the incident. 

Soon after, the Association of American Railroads announced that the railroad discovered that some coil cars on the train that were recently built by National Steel Car of Hamilton, Ontario, had loose wheelsets. AAR urged all railroads to pull the cars from service as soon as possible. 

“The NTSB has initiated an investigation focusing on the performance of wheelsets. The NTSB requested that NS recover eight wheelsets from two of the derailed railcars; photographs taken on scene after the derailment show that three wheels from these wheelsets exhibited movement on their axles,” the agency wrote in its preliminary report. 

The full investigation is expected to take months.