On September 11, 2001, the attack on the World Trade Center made our life’s different forever. After using an airplane as weapon, the terrorist focused on bombing passenger trains in England and Spain. Subsequent to those incidents, the industry realized that we needed to focus on a possible attack of a domestic passenger train. In 2005, CSX Transportation formed a Railroad Tactical Team to teach Swat Teams around the country on how to deal terrorism on a passenger train. A new and specialized training tool needed to be developed for this new mission.

Today, Safety Train V, the “Swat Train,” is used by CSX’s RRT to teach Swat Teams from around the country on how to “Safely” mitigate an incident on a passenger train. The Swat Train consists of a locomotive, two former New Jersey Transit coaches,
a bi-level coach, former Amtrak sleeping car and a classroom constructed in a passenger car. The Swat Train has training props, including explosion, smoke and real life manikins.

In 2008, the Foundation welcomed a new partner and member, the Dow Chemical Corporation. Dow, which is one of the largest chemical companies in the world, funded the construction of a complete Safety Train, including two classroom cars, a “Dome Car” and three tank cars. Safety Train VI, travels around the country on lines that carry large amounts of hazardous materials. This Safety Train demonstrates Dow’s commitment to teach the emergency responders along the nation’s railroads. With Dow’s partnership, the three groups involved with the “Safe” transportation of hazardous materials were finally represented. Now, the railroads, chemical industry and the emergency responders could focus their training efforts jointly.

In the future, we will continue to build more specialized equipment to better serve our the nation’s emergency responders.

The “History of the Safety Train” would not be complete without thanking our “Special
Friends” that helped shape the program. Romano De Simone, former Hazardous Material Manager of the Albany Division for Conrail and now Director of Hazardous Materials of CSX Transportation and Skip Elliott, former Director of Hazardous Materials for Conrail and now Vice President of Environment and Security of CSX were believers from the beginning. They provided the necessary guidance that helped us build our Safety Trains. Also, Henry Ward, Global Supply Chain Director for Dow Chemical, who convinced Dow to become a member of the foundation for the future of their train.

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