Ellen Brody

After a crash at the Commerce Street crossing in 1984 that had killed the driver of the van involved, boom barriers had been installed.

The crash is the deadliest in Metro-North's history, and at the time the deadliest rail accident in the United States since the June 2009 Washington Metro train collision, which killed nine passengers and injured 80.

The crash occurred after traffic on the adjacent Taconic State Parkway had been detoured onto local roads following a car accident that closed the road in one direction.

At the grade crossing, a sport utility vehicle (SUV) driven by Ellen Brody of nearby Edgemont was caught between the crossing gates when they descended onto the rear of her car as the train approached from the south.

Instead of backing into the space another driver had created for her, she went forward onto the tracks.

Brody died when her vehicle was struck by the train; as her vehicle was pushed along the tracks it loosened more than 450 ft of third rail, which broke into sections and went through the exterior of the first car, killing five passengers and starting a fire.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) focused on two issues in the accident: how the passengers were killed, since that rarely occurs in grade crossing collisions; and why Brody went forward into the train's path.

The parkway was still closed after 6 p.m., when a 2011 Mercedes-Benz ML350 SUV driven by Ellen Schaeffer Brody, 49, of Edgemont, went north on Commerce back towards the parkway.

Brody was on her way from her job in Chappaqua to Scarsdale, not a route she drove often.

Unable to continue south on the Taconic at Lakeview, she turned west, then north up Commerce Street, towards the intersection she had previously passed.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) later theorized she was hoping the accident had been cleared enough to allow her to return to the southbound Taconic.

Cell phone records show that Brody's husband, Alan, called and spoke to her for almost nine minutes at 6:11, during which time she was apparently still on the Taconic.

He told investigators later that during the call he gave her directions to Scarsdale; there was nothing out of the ordinary about the conversation.

It could not be determined if she had the phone on speaker, which would have allowed her to keep both hands on the wheel, but according to Alan, the ML350 was equipped with software that automatically detected the phone if it was in the vehicle and put it on speaker.

Alan did not believe she was familiar with the area through which she was driving, or with grade crossings.

The call was dropped at 6:19.

Shortly afterwards she apparently reached the site of the road accident at the Lakeview intersection and took the detour for reasons unknown.

Behind her was a vehicle driven by Rick Hope of Yorktown Heights, returning home from his job in White Plains.

He told the investigators that traffic was stop-and-go on Lakeview and Commerce.

Both Hope and Brody had stopped for a few seconds at the grade crossing.

At the grade crossing, Train 659 was approaching on the western track.

The crossing gates descended, warning lights began flashing and, according to Hope, bells began ringing.

Hope says Brody's SUV was in front of the gate as it descended, but not on the tracks.

On the evening of February 3, 2015, a commuter train on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line struck a passenger car at a grade crossing near Valhalla, New York, United States, between the Valhalla and Mount Pleasant stations, killing six people and injuring 15 others, seven very seriously.

At about 5:30 p.m. on February 3, 2015, 14 minutes after sunset, a vehicle traveling south along the Taconic State Parkway north of Valhalla, New York, in central Westchester County north of New York City, struck another vehicle making a turn onto Lakeview Avenue from the northbound parkway.

Responding emergency services closed both lanes of the southbound Taconic and one northbound lane.

Drivers heading in both directions left the parkway, seeking alternate routes back to it on local surface roads.

Almost 15 minutes later, at 5:44, Train 659 of Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line departed Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, 26 mi south of Valhalla.

It was an express train of eight cars, formed by four Bombardier M7A electric multiple units, bound for the Southeast station in Putnam County, with Chappaqua its first scheduled stop.

At the controls was Stephen Smalls, a 32-year-old resident of Orange County, a three-year Metro-North employee.

He had been an engineer for nine months.

The part of the parkway in Valhalla remained closed.

One detour available to northbound traffic involved using Lakeview Avenue and turning at the large Kensico Cemetery, a short distance to the west.

Lakeview Avenue crossed the two tracks using a grade crossing.

The next such crossing was Commerce Street, a lightly traveled local road to the north that intersects the tracks diagonally.

It continues northwest through the cemetery for 1/4 mi, then turns north again down a slight rise back over another grade crossing to a signal-controlled intersection with the parkway.

After an unusually long delay for such investigations that it declined to explain, the board's 2017 final report found the driver of the SUV to be the cause of the accident.

It found no defects with the vehicle, the crossing signage and associated traffic signal preemption, or the train engineer's performance.

It found that the failure of the third rail to break into smaller segments contributed to the fatalities on the train; while the report ruled out proposed explanations for Brody's behavior such as the placement of her car's gear shift lever, it could not offer any of its own.

Despite the report's findings, lawsuits were filed against the town of Mount Pleasant, which maintains the road along which the grade crossing is located, Westchester County, the railroad, and the engineer.