LIRR signalman who lied about inspecting faulty equipment before 2019 derailment gets one year probation

A former Long Island Rail Road signalman was sentenced Friday to a year of probation for falsely logging an inspection of broken track signal equipment that contributed to a train derailment.

"A sentence of incarceration would be wholly unwarranted," said U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert in Central Islip, observing that defendant Stuart Conklin had "never gotten a traffic ticket" before pleading guilty last year to falsifying records required by federal railroad violations, a felony, after an investigation into the 2019 Memorial Day weekend derailment of two LIRR trains.

Conklin, 67, a 17-year LIRR veteran who resigned shortly after the derailment, had initially faced up to 2 years in prison. He could also have been fined, but Seybert told him she would skip the fine and "ask you to donate your time to various charitable activities that you can get involved in."

The derailment near Speonk disrupted travel to the South Fork on a Saturday morning on Memorial Day weekend, one of the busiest weekends of the year in the Hamptons. There were no serious injuries but LIRR officials scrambled to provide bus shuttles and repair the tracks in time for the Monday exodus of thousands of visitors. The derailment ripped up hundreds of feet of track, required 100 workers to repair it and cost the railroad about $200,000, prosecutors have said.

Conklin was not charged with causing the derailment but admitted in federal court in Central Islip last year that he falsely logged an April 26, 2019, inspection for the faulty connection. Conklin had said in a report he was required to file that he had inspected the bond during his usual work as he walked the track and that it passed inspection. But video footage from an LIRR camera showed that Conklin did not do the inspection during his shift that day, prosecutors said.

Conklin, a former Ronkonkoma resident who now lives in Magnolia, Texas, and works at a golf course, declined to comment after the hearing. Conklin's lawyer, Anthony LaPinta, said in an interview that his client had inspected the track about a week before he reported having done so.

LaPinta said the derailment "was a major debacle that had numerous contributing factors" and that LIRR had used his client as a "scapegoat."

In a statement Friday, MTA Inspector General Daniel G. Cort excoriated the former signalman.

"Stuart Conklin chose laziness and deception over doing his job, and it is incredibly fortunate that no LIRR riders or any of his own colleagues were injured in the derailment," he said. "Public safety was put at risk."

In a statement prior to sentencing, Conklin told the court that he "performed my daily work proudly. I always completed my track inspections. I do, however, take full responsibility for misdating this particular inspection form. I do not take responsibility for the derailment."

According to a Federal Railroad Administration report on the crash, a westbound train with no passengers had pulled over to a side track east of Speonk to permit the eastbound train to pass. The crew of the 14-car westbound train was "aware that the train was too long to fit into the siding," but the faulty signal indicated to a "block operator" in Babylon monitoring the trains' progress that the train had cleared the main track, the report said.

The engineer of the eastbound train, getting the signal to proceed, was five car lengths from impact when he saw the rear car of the pulled-over train, a diesel locomotive, "fouling" — or sticking out — onto the main track ahead of him, the report said. The engineer of the eastbound train applied the emergency brakes, but his train struck the left side of the other's engine, the report said.