Pair killed in puzzling derailment

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. - They were seemingly ordinary tweets from two friends hanging out on a railroad bridge in their hometown, enjoying one last summer night together before heading back to college.

"Drinking on top of the Ellicott City sign," read one. Accompanying photos showed their view from the bridge and their bare feet, one with painted-blue toenails, dangling over the edge.

Minutes after the messages were sent, a 90-car CSX freight train loaded with coal barreled down the tracks and derailed late Monday, killing the 19-year-old women and toppling more than 20 cars on their side and thousands of tons of coal on the streets below.

Investigators Tuesday were still trying to figure out what caused the derailment of the train. It appeared the women were sitting on the edge of the single-track bridge as the train passed a few feet behind them, Howard County police said. At some point, the train derailed and the women's bodies were found buried under coal.

In statements taken by police, the crew members said they never saw the women.

Killed were Elizabeth Nass, a student at James Madison University in Virginia, and Rose Mayr, a nursing student at the University of Delaware.

The railroad is easily accessible from downtown Ellicott City, where generations of young people have played and partied along the tracks.

The pictures and the tweets from Mayr were no longer publicly available Tuesday afternoon, but friends confirmed they were hers and police said they were aware of the posts and looking into them.

CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said the train had been traveling from Grafton, W.Va., to Baltimore. It had three train operators, who were not harmed.

"These accidents happen very quickly," said Jim Southworth, lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. "They don't take much time at all, but the investigations take a great deal of time." He said the train was equipped with video recording devices that investigators will review. He said the train was going about 25 m.p.h. but would not say whether that was an appropriate speed for the area.

The rail line that links the coal fields of West Virginia to Baltimore is expected to be closed for days.Coal the train was carrying spilled into a tributary of the Patapsco River, a major Maryland waterway that parallels the tracks. Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman Jay Apperson said much more coal lay along the edge of the tributary.The derailment damaged some of Verizon's equipment, disrupting landline telecommunications services to clients, including some government customers.

The problems reached all the way to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where pretrial hearings were delayed for a day for five men charged with orchestrating and aiding the Sept. 11 attacks because files on government servers were temporarily unavailable.