Location of (Portage, Indiana)

 crash site, historical layer / disappeared object

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Location of an 1998 accident involving a NICTD passenger train and a semitrailer hauling steel coils. Three fatalities, five minor injuries, and a destroyed NICTD railcar was a result.

ABSTRACT:
About 4:31 a.m. on June 18, 1998, a westbound Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation
District two-car passenger train struck the second semitrailer of a long combination vehicle consisting of a tractor pulling two flatbed semitrailers loaded with steel coils at a highway-rail grade crossing near Portage, Indiana. When the vehicles collided, the second semitrailer broke away and was dragged by the train, while a chain securing a steel coil to the second semitrailer broke. The released coil entered the train’s lead car
through the front bulkhead and moved into the passenger compartment. Three fatalities and five minor injuries resulted.

National Transportation Safety Board. 1999. Collision of Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District Train 102 With a Tractor-Trailer, Portage, Indiana, June 18, 1998. Railroad Accident Report NTSB/RAR-99/03. Washington, DC.