Video taken 20 miles before E Palestine train derailment showed axle fire

At 8:12 p.m. on Feb. 3, the southbound freight train passed by Butech Bliss, an industrial equipment manufacturer in Salem. One car, a few dozen behind the first locomotive, glowed brightly on the bottom as it passed.

A minute later and a mile down the track, a camera at a meat processing plant called Fresh Mark captured the same fiery axle.

On the railroad tracks in front of Fresh Mark, there is an instrument called a hot box detector, which scans the temperature of the passing train axles to ensure they are not overheated. If the device finds a problem, a defect detection alert sounds over the train radio.

Detecting a defect so hot that it would appear to be on fire would require the crew to stop the train immediately and inspect the problem, said Scott Wilcox, a retired Norfolk Southern engineer who worked on the Fort Wayne line, where trains travel between Chicago and the big railyard in the Beaver County town of Conway.

Hot box detectors are typically spaced every 10 to 20 miles apart, Mr. Wilcox said. On this particular track, the next detector after Salem was in East Palestine. The train would have passed that one less than a mile before derailing on Feb. 3.

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