A memorial of flowers left by relatives of the Amtrak crash victims stands near one of the burned train cars. The March 15, 1999 crash killed eleven and injured 122 others.

CHICAGO -- Following a trail of gas station receipts and witness accounts, investigators have determined that the truck driver involved in the fatal collision with an Amtrak train in Bourbonnais two years ago had been on the road for more than 30 hours -- triple the federal legal limit -- until the accident and had complained of being tired, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Trucker John R. Stokes told authorities he was asleep in his Will County home during the day on March 15, 1999, resting for a scheduled nighttime delivery of steel, when in fact he made an unreported run to Ohio to haul forklifts back to a company in south suburban Peotone, according to officials close to the investigation.

On completing the trip from Ohio, and only minutes after a weary-looking Stokes told a steel mill employee that he was battling severe fatigue, his semitrailer truck was struck by Amtrak's City of New Orleans train at the McKnight Road crossing in Bourbonnais, authorities said.

Eleven passengers aboard the Amtrak superliner were killed and 122 others were injured when the 14-car train hit the truck's rear axle and derailed. A ruptured tank leaked diesel fuel from one of the twin locomotives, setting off massive fires.

"The guy was driving or awake for up to 38 hours on an undocumented delivery with maybe a total of five hours off," one official said. The official explained that investigators calculated the amount of time Stokes spent behind the wheel by painstakingly tracing his route through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio and determining how long it took to load and unload cargo and refuel his rig.

When authorities confronted Stokes about missing entries in his logbook for the long string of hours he worked between 7 a.m. March 14 and 9:47 p.m. March 15 when the accident occurred, Stokes said he made an honest mistake, likely prompted by the stress of the crash, in forgetting about the unreported trip to Ohio. But he apparently was mindful enough to try to cover his tracks -- paying for fuel with cash instead of using a credit card, investigators say.

Although it was more difficult, Illinois State Police investigators were able to trace Stokes' pit stops from records of cash fuel purchases linked to his truck, a law enforcement official said. Investigators also are checking at least a dozen other instances in which Stokes, 59, might have violated federal laws that limit how long a trucker can be on the road without a rest. The search is being aided by the inspector general's office of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Federal accident investigators have not determined the cause of the crash. It occurred at a rail crossing notorious for truck drivers ignoring the blinking red lights and protective barriers, police said, and for an occasional malfunctioning of the warning system that has prompted some close calls, nearby residents said. The Canadian National-Illinois Central Railroad, which owns the tracks, installed video cameras at the crossing after the accident.

Stokes, who gave authorities a statement after the crash but then refused to cooperate, quickly became the primary focus of the probe. Investigators said they began zeroing in on Stokes because of previous violations on his driving record, which resulted in the suspension of his commercial driver's license after the crash in Bourbonnais, about 50 miles south of Chicago.

The additional evidence that he allegedly ignored the federal limit of driving no more than 10 hours before taking eight hours off raised concerns.

"Even if the gates malfunctioned, that man had no business being behind the steering wheel of a 78,000-pound truck," said one law-enforcement official, alluding to the impaired judgment and slower reaction times that are the most insidious symptoms of driver fatigue. Driving 17 hours without sleep is like driving with a 0.05 blood-alcohol level, according to a recent study cited by the group Parents Against Tired Truckers. Investigators seeking to determine the cause of the crash are now focusing on Stokes' fatigue.

Initial testing of the railroad track circuit equipment uncovered no problems, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Further analysis is being conducted to verify that the system, which is supposed to lower the gates and start the warning bells and lights 26 seconds before a train enters the crossing, worked properly, said Miriam Kloeppel, the safety board's investigator-in-charge.

Investigators also are sorting through conflicting witness accounts regarding whether Stokes' truck was already blocking the grade crossing when the warning system activated -- possibly indicating an equipment malfunction -- or if he tried to beat the 79-mile-an-hour Amtrak train that had departed Chicago's Union Station.

Police said a witness at the scene came forward to say that Stokes told him that he saw the railroad warning lights illuminate before the truck was on the tracks, but that he thought he could make it across.

"I didn't think the train was moving that fast," Stokes, who was described as "wandering" around the train wreckage, reportedly told the bystander, according to investigative records. After realizing that he had mistaken the Amtrak train for a slow freight train, Stokes reportedly lamented to the witness, " ... and here it had to be the fast one."

The last entry in Stokes' logbook for March 15 was at 8:15 a.m., although he told police that he dropped off his truck much later, about 2:30 p.m., at the Peotone trucking company where he was employed, then drove his car to his house in Manteno to rest before having to work again later in the evening.

Paper trail grows

But Illinois State Police investigators, acting on a tip, recently obtained a fuel receipt from the operator of a truck stop in Eaton, Ohio. The receipt, which lists Stokes' truck, had a time-stamp of 3:32 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It confirmed that Stokes was about 275 miles away when he told authorities he was at home. A cashier at the truck stop also identified a photograph of Stokes, saying he had been at the truck stop, the investigators said.

They added that Stokes paid cash for the $80 worth of fuel he bought, apparently to avoid leaving a paper trail leading to the unlogged run. They said employees of the trucking firm at which he worked, Melco Transfer Inc. of Peotone, normally put fuel expenses on credit cards.

Authorities then began checking every truck stop between Ohio and Illinois, and they traced Stokes to another truck stop in Rensselaer, Ind. The time on that receipt indicated he stopped for fuel there on his way to Ohio.

Stokes, who has a history of driving and logbook violations, changed his story months after the crash, investigators said. Efforts to reach Stokes, who has not been charged, or his attorney for comments on this story were unsuccessful.

But Stokes' attorney, Leonard Sacks, wrote a letter to investigators last May saying Stokes forgot about the trip to Ohio because of stress and trauma from the crash.

Investigators said the revised timetable that Sacks provided failed to match up with the evidence, which included Stokes' signature and truck identification on documents at the company in Canal Winchester, Ohio, where he picked up the forklifts and other equipment. Earlier, Stokes made a delivery to a building supplier in Dayton, officials said.

Investigators said Stokes drove directly to the Birmingham Steel Corp. in Bourbonnais, arriving about 8:15 p.m. He picked up a load of steel bars, drove through the foundry's scale house and departed between 9:40 and 9:45 p.m. The crash at the McKnight Road crossing occurred at 9:47 p.m. Safety board investigator Kloeppel confirmed that authorities were comparing conflicts in Stokes' statements to police and entries in his logbook with other evidence pointing to his whereabouts.

"Questions of discrepancies like that are issues we have taken up with his attorney," Kloeppel said.

Stokes could face federal charges of falsifying log documents, which on conviction typically result in fines and sanctions or a possible prison term. Local and state law-enforcement agencies also are considering charges.

History of violations

The Federal Highway Administration fined Stokes $2,000 in May 1999 for four logbook violations in which he reported he was off duty when he was actually working, but authorities classified the actions as paperwork violations because they were unable to prove he exceeded the driving-time limits in those cases. Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White suspended Stokes' commercial license for two months in mid-1999 because he received two speeding tickets within three years. He also had been driving on a probationary permit.

Investigators also are trying to determine who hired Stokes to make the Ohio run and are giving close scrutiny to Stokes' employer, Melco Transfer. They said the company's owner, Melvin Marshall, denied any knowledge of the forklifts that Stokes hauled from Ohio on the day of the accident. The equipment was delivered to another Peotone company. Officials of that firm and Melco said they have never done business with each other, officials said.

Officials at Melco could not be reached for comment.

Safety board investigations normally take eight months to a year. The slow pace of the Bourbonnais probe has upset survivors and the families of victims.

Kloeppel said progress was delayed because of the illness and subsequent death of the first chief investigator on the case. She said the final report is expected to be completed over the summer. A finding of probable cause likely will be issued at a safety board meeting later in the year.

Officials at the Federal Highway Administration said the problem of truck drivers working beyond the legal time limits is rampant and is difficult to prosecute because drivers often keep two sets of logbooks. Fatigued commercial truckers are responsible for causing about 300 crashes a year, the agency said. New federal rules, replacing the 70-year-old statutes on driving time, are being written. They would put truck drivers on a 12 hours-on, 12 hours-off cycle to help facilitate healthy sleep patterns.