Sumner Newscow report — The remains of two Burlington Northern railroad workers have been recovered from the wreckage of Tuesday’s head-on train crash in Panhandle, Texas.

A third worker hadn’t yet been found yet, but he was presumed dead, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Richard Hipskind said in a media briefing today. According to local sources, the train collision did not involve anyone from Sumner County.

According to an Amarillo Globe report, three employees were unaccounted for as diesel from a recently refueled engine burned in the wreckage throughout the night. Overnight, the rescue efforts were changed over to recovery efforts as hopes dimmed.

BNSF spokesman Joe Faust has confirmed that two sets of remains have been recovered today.

“The entire BNSF family is terribly saddened by this event and we extend our deepest sympathy and thoughts to the families and friends of the employees involved in this incident,” said BNSF President and CEO Carl Ice in a press release. “This is an extremely difficult time and our entire organization grieves for our colleagues.”

Workers continue to clear the wreckage from the tracks and search for the remains of the third missing employee. BNSF is not releasing the employees’ names out of respect for the families’ privacy, Faust said.

The families of the three BNSF employees were informed that their loved ones, who were not publicly identified, were missing, Faust said.

While the track speed in the area is 70 mph, neither train was traveling that fast, officials said. The cause of the collision remains under investigation.

The diesel-fueled trains were known as “mixed freights,” carrying primarily consumer goods, Faust said. One was headed from Chicago to Los Angeles, and the other was traveling from San Bernardino, California, to Chicago.

Freight cars and containers were derailed and strewn about 400 yards from the collision site just outside the town of Panhandle, Buesing said. Floodlights were brought in overnight to aid emergency workers trying to quell the flames and start the search for the three crew members, he said.

Both trains carried stacked containers of consumer goods, such as paper products, clothing, television sets and computers.

It’s not clear how fast the trains were traveling when they collided, but the speed limit in that area is 70 mph and Faust said they were “traveling at less than track speed.” It also wasn’t clear why the trains were on the same track.

Steven Ditmeyer, a railway management, railroad and transportation economics and Positive Train Control expert at Michigan State University, said that while his assessment is very speculative he thinks it is likely that one train may have run a traffic-control red light at what’s called a “passing loop.”

John Wright, a national organizer for the Railroad Workers United union who is a working locomotive engineer, said, “My thoughts are with the family members of our brothers and sisters.” Wright said train engineers are in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLET) and train conductors are in a different union, called SMART.

“We are watching the language from the industry and NTSB to make sure workers voices are heard,” Wright said. “As a worker, we need to be careful who is at fault in this incident. Occupational fatigue kills.”

Wright said, “BNSF was the first railroad to seek for 1-person operation of trains. There is federal language being drafted right now to determine how many workers should be on a train.”

Wright wondered why PTC hasn’t been implemented on the nation’s rail lines “in a timely fashion?”

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