He began drinking in the early morning when he got home from work, just a few sunrise beers to unwind after a long night hurtling through the dark subway tunnels. But by early afternoon, investigators said, he had switched to Dewar's White Label Scotch and he drank until after 3 P.M., when he went to bed.
It was sweltering in New York that day, last Tuesday, and Robert E. Ray slept through the worst of the heat, rising at 10:30 P.M. to prepare for his final graveyard workshift of the week, eight hours in the dead of night at the controls of a train roaring up and down the Bronx, Manhattan's East Side and Brooklyn.
He put on dark trousers, a pair of sneakers, a white short-sleeved shirt with a Metropolitan Transportation Authority patch on the right sleeve, a blue sweater and a blue baseball cap. Then, investigators said, Mr. Ray, a 38-year-old divorced man deeply troubled by family and alcohol problems, had a couple more quick drinks. Flirting With Danger
It was thus after 11 P.M. -- Mr. Ray was late again -- when he finally left the 37th-floor apartment he shares with his fiancee and her two children in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx, and, as was his habit, caught a taxi to the IRT's northern terminal, Woodlawn station, where he began work each night.
For all its heavy responsibility, his job was an anonymous one: Mr. Ray, one of 2,900 New York subway train operators -- commonly referred to as motormen, even though more than 100 are women -- was glimpsed fleetingly, if at all, in the tiny cabs of trains entering stations, but was entrusted daily with the smooth operation of multi-million dollar trains and the safety of tens of thousands of passengers.
While the potential for catastrophe is always present, experts say, New York's subways are statistically safer than traveling by car. But for anyone who wanted to take note of them, there were many indications, beyond a work record spotted with infractions, that Mr. Ray had been flirting with danger lately, and that tragedy lurked down the tracks this night.
Within an hour, Mr. Ray's train -- after a nightmarish ride downtown with overshot platforms, abrupt stops and other lurchings -- jumped the tracks at breakneck speed, plowed into walls and support columns and lay in a tangle of crushed and twisted metal in a smoking tunnel near Union Square in Manhattan. Five riders had been killed and 200 injured, and subway and surface traffic would be snarled for a week in the worst subway accident in New York in 63 years.
Mr. Ray has been charged with five counts of manslaughter and accused of being drunk during the accident; tests 13 hours later showed 0.21 percent of alcohol in his blood, twice the legal limit for drunkenness; so high, in fact, as to suggest chronic alcohol abuse, experts say. But Mr. Ray's lawyer, Michael Parson, has insisted that his client is innocent and that any alcohol in his blood was the result of drinking after the crash. Recurring Signs Of Alcohol Abuse
Federal, state and local investigations may take months to determine what went wrong and assess blame. But a reconstruction based on dozens of interviews with riders, transit officials, investigators and others, shows that the tragedy might have been averted by any number of people who knew of Mr. Ray's drinking problems or had seen his erratic behavior or his train's strange movements and had failed to intervene.
Mr. Ray was due for work at 11:15 P.M., but arrived 15 minutes late, carrying his tools for operating a Lexington Avenue No. 4 express, which travels between Woodlawn in the Bronx and New Lots Avenue in Brooklyn and is made up of 10 relatively new R-62 cars with a silvery gleam.
The tools included a reverser key, resembling a two-pronged fork, that is used to power up and move the train forward or back; a long key to open train doors; a brake handle, and another key to uncouple cars.
With less than three years seniority in a $36,000-a-year job that is coveted by many transit employees, Mr. Ray did not have his pick of schedules, routes or trains. He worked from 11:15 P.M. to 7:15 A.M. Saturdays through Wednesdays, with Thursdays and Fridays off.
And instead of operating the same train each night, he filled in for other motormen on their weekends, taking a different train, with a different conductor, out each night. Not having a regular partner, officials said, was double-edged, for it may have shielded Mr. Ray's conduct from a conductor's scrutiny, but deprived him of the protective closeness that a regular partner might have provided.
Before taking a train out, motormen must report to a dispatcher and sign an attendance sheet. The dispatcher is required to observe the operator to insure that he or she is fit for duty. Bloodshot eyes, impaired speech, signs of drug or alcohol use are among the grounds for ruling an operator unfit for duty.
Improper dress may also disqualify an operator. Tennis shoes, such as those worn by Mr. Ray Tuesday night, or any soft-soled shoes inappropriate for walking on tracks are unacceptable. A decision to remove a motorman from duty must be reported to the Transit Authority's command center at 370 Jay Street in Brooklyn. Disciplinary action may be taken against an unfit motorman or against a dispatcher who fails to report someone unfit for duty.
The dispatcher on duty at Woodlawn Tuesday night, identified by transit officials as Percival Hossack, took no action against Mr. Ray. Instead, he initialed the attendance sheet, confirming Mr. Ray's signature, assigned the motorman his train and issued him a portable radio for use during the shift.
Steve Darden, a subway conductor who was going off duty just as Mr. Ray arrived, recalled that the dispatcher appeared to be angry with Mr. Ray, but he said he did not know what it was about.
Since he was late, Mr. Ray did not stop to socialize with other motormen, as he often did, in a transit workers' lounge at the end of the platform. It is a place to chat, clean up, eat a slice of pizza or watch television. Mr. Ray was described by some of the motormen as a jovial, joke-cracking and likable man who often spoke of loving his job and music -- he played the drums, had taken up the guitar and liked rhythm-and-blues -- but he rarely spoke of the family problems that had plagued him in recent years.
And there was, in the locker-room atmosphere of the lounge, a kind of code of silence about drinking on the job. Many motormen acknowledged that their colleagues drank before or even during working hours, but said that reporting one another would amount to betrayal and said they could never do that.
Mr. Ray was one of the drinkers. A tall, slender, bespectacled man, he was a born-again Christian who attended City College in the early 1970's but did not earn a degree, joined the Transit Authority in 1983 as a subway car-cleaner and was promoted to motorman in June 1988. He was tested for drugs then, and again last January when he ran his train through a red signal; both tests were negative, but Mr. Ray was suspended without pay for three days.
He is divorced and the father of three children, a 9-year-old daughter by his former wife, and a 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter by an estranged girlfriend who has barred him from seeing them, friends said.
After living alone for a year in a $100-a-week room in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, Mr. Ray last May moved in with Marilyn Holmes, a Transit Authority token booth clerk he met last year. They shared her three-bedroom apartment on Richman Plaza with her two sons. Recently Ms. Holmes proudly told neighbors that she and Mr. Ray were planning to be married in October.
But a friend said Mr. Ray cast a different light on the plans, complaining that he was not ready to marry again. Others said he was distressed at being unable to see his younger children, and appeared to have been brooding and drinking more than usual lately.
And Mr. Ray's work record showed a series of recent irregularities. He failed to show up for work last Dec. 25 and received a warning; on Jan. 5, he again failed to report and was warned again; on Jan. 15 he ran a red signal and got a three-day suspension without pay, imposed Aug. 5-7; on April 9, he was late for work and got a one-day suspension, which is pending; on June 6, he again failed to show up for work and was given an added one-day suspension.
Several of Mr. Ray's fellow motormen said it was common knowledge in their group that Mr. Ray drank on the job. "I've seen him drinking before going on duty before, and I've smelled liquor on his breath," said one motorman, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
A crack vial was found in Mr. Ray's cab, but transit police say such vials are common on the floors of trains and this one could have rolled or been kicked into the cab. Moreover, tests showed no traces of the drug in Mr. Ray's system.
Mr. Ray's train was scheduled to depart at 11:32 P.M., but was late pulling out. Some passengers were waiting on the platform, and so was David Beerram, the conductor, and Mr. Darden, the off-duty conductor heading home after his regular workshift who had just seen the dispatcher talking angrily to Mr. Ray. Mr. Darden said he had a strange feeling as he waited to board the train, as if something was wrong.
Mr. Ray arrived and got into the cab. He put his reverse key into a slot on the control panel and pushed it forward; the train powered up and the lights came on. Mr. Ray put his brake handle into position, charged up the brake pressure and tested it.
Finally, with the riders and conductor all boarded, he held down a control handle that applies power to the motor, and at 11:38 the Woodlawn Express began its fateful trip downtown. The signs of trouble began almost immediately.
At the first stop, Mosholu Parkway, Mr. Ray overshot the station and halted with the first five cars beyond the platform and into the tunnel, forcing passengers to scramble for doors in the rear and exposing riders in the front to gaping abysses in every doorway.
"Hey, what happened?" Mr. Beerram, the conductor, asked the motorman over the train's open public-address system, riders recalled. "What's going on?"
There was no coherent reply.
At the next stop, Bedford Park Boulevard, Mr. Ray overshot the station platform again, this time by one car. 'Ah, Don't Worry, I'm All Right
And again, Mr. Beerram spoke to the motorman over the public-address system, asking if he was okay.
"Ah, don't worry," Mr. Ray replied. "I'm all right."
At the next several stations, the motorman's driving became curiously overcautious, witnesses said. He moved slowly into stations and crawled to a halt.
"Hey, stop fooling around," the conductor admonished, and Mr. Ray speeded up again -- moving faster and faster between stations until some riders became alarmed. Later, Mr. Beerram and Mr. Darden, the off-duty transit worker riding the train, both warned the motorman that he was driving too fast, according to the police.
Mr. Beerram later denied having made such a statement. But Mr. Darden said it was obvious that something was wrong, that the motorman was reacting too slowly and handling the train bizarrely.
After dipping from elevated tracks into the tunnel just below Yankee Stadium and entering Manhattan above 125th Street, the train "started going crazy fast," recalled Jerry Yambl, a 22-year-old from Fort Sill, Okla.
Despite its speed, the train apparently did not come close to overtaking another train on the tracks ahead. Red signal lights go up in the tunnels and at each station when a train ahead passes, indicating to following trains that they may not proceed. If a following train runs through such a red light, a trip arm automatically activates the emergency brake system, and this did not happen to Mr. Ray's train, officials said.
As the train sped south, the number of riders on board swelled to about 500, and many sensed trouble. At some stops in Manhattan, the train screeched to abrupt halts, started jerkily and moved too fast in the tunnel, some riders said. Others said the train was rushing between stations at frightening speeds they estimated at greater than the train's 54-mile-an-hour maximum.
Mr. Ray later told authorities he had been traveling at between 35 and 45 miles an hour, and was falling asleep at the throttle.
"I was nodding off," one investigator quoted him as saying.
Though the danger was growing by the moment, no one -- not the conductor, not the transit worker on board, nor any of the hundreds of passengers -- pulled the emergency brake cord that dangled from the ceiling at either end of every car, an action that would have brought the train to a halt and required a complex restarting that might have alerted someone to the motorman's condition and averted the crash. A Trip to the Park Amid Wailing Sirens
Transit officials said it was the duty of the conductor, who opens and shuts the doors and is nominally in charge of safety on a train, to radio to the transit command station if he believes a motorman is not operating under proper control. In an emergency, the conductor may even tell the command station to shut off power on the line to halt a train.
Mr. Beerram at one point threatened to call the command center to report the motorman's erratic driving, officials said, but there were no indications that he did so. Failure to report such erratic driving would itself be an infraction of transit rules, but not a criminal matter, officials said.
Transit officials in the command center are also responsible for a train and its safe operation. They monitor train movements on electronic boards with lights that go on and off as trains pass over trackside trip levers. But they said they had no way to measure a train's speed or to detect erratic driving, and they rely on reports from conductors and other transit workers. The command center officials were thus not faulted.
Mr. Ray told the police that he again fell asleep as the train hurtled toward its tragic rendezvous near 14th Street and Union Square. About 200 feet north of the station, the train had to switch from inside express tracks to outside local tracks; the speed limit for the switchpoint is 10 miles an hour, but the train was traveling up to five times that speed, officials said.
There were safety devices on the tracks designed to slow or halt a speeding train. But the equipment is antiquated. Trains moving too fast toward the station and switch points activate trip arms that measure speeds and automatically engage the trains' emergency brake systems.
The devices apparently were working, officials said, but Mr. Ray's train was moving too fast to stop before reaching the switch. They said the absence of state-of-the-art safety equipment at Union Square and on most of the system's 740 miles of track make New York's subway especially vulnerable to human error.
Disaster overtook the Woodlawn Express at 12:10 A.M.
Mr. Ray, apparently asleep, did not see a red signal looming up at the switch point. The speeding train failed to make the little curve to cross from express to local tracks, and the derailment began. The lead car veered right, smashing into the tunnel's outer wall, then veered left, slashing through a dozen steel beams supporting the tunnel and shearing the car in half lengthwise.
The next four cars also derailed and were crushed together in tangled masses of twisted metal. Passengers were hurled like ragdolls through the cars; some were crushed and killed, many suffered broken bones and others were relatively unscathed. A maelstrom of furnace-like heat, of moaning, screaming, smoke and confusion, swirled in a blinding subterranean grotesquerie.
But somehow the motorman's cab remained intact and Mr. Ray, who said he was asleep at the time of the derailment, was unhurt. He jumped down onto the track bed, peered around, glimpsed light through the smoky chaos and made his way to the 14th Street station platform.
There he encountered two transit police officers and, though dazed, identified himself as the motorman. The officers then left him and dashed into the tunnel to join the rescue efforts. Within minutes, hundreds of police officers, firefighters, medical and other emergency service personnel were pouring into the tunnel and began the all-night task of rescuing the injured and retrieving the dead.
Mr. Ray left the station and walked up to the street. He sat on a bench in Union Square Park for awhile, trying to get his bearings amid the kaleidoscope of wailing sirens, squawking radios, flashing lights and shouting, running people. He needed a drink, he told the police, and so he went to a nearby Korean grocery and bought three beers.
He took them back to the park bench and drank them as he watched the huge rescue effort unfold around him. It was a fearful scene: bleeding people lying on stretchers, propped against trees, sprawled over the ground like victims on a battlefield. Later, they brought out the dead in body bags.
Mr. Ray was still there at 3:30 A.M. when the last injured passenger -- Mr. Darden, the off-duty transit worker -- was brought out and Mayor David N. Dinkins and Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown held a sidewalk news conference for a cluster of reporters and television cameras.
The motorman, the Mayor and Police Commissioner said, had disappeared, in violation of Transit Authority rules prohibiting personnel from leaving the scene of an accident.
Later, four transit police officers were sent to Mr. Ray's apartment. Ms. Holmes and Mr. Ray's brother, Charles, told them they did not know where he was. The officers staked out the building, and at 5:30 A.M., Mr. Ray was seized as he walked toward the lobby.
He was driven down to the 13th Precinct stationhouse at 230 East 21st Street, where the early investigation of the crash was centered. Tests for alcohol in his bloodstream were delayed for eight more hours by the necessity of obtaining a court order.
In the meantime, however, Mr. Ray waived his rights to have a lawyer present and, instead, spoke calmly through the dawning new day to the detectives who questioned him about his drinking, about dozing at the controls, about his last midnight run to disaster on the Woodlawn Express.