MONTVALE, N.J. -- A NJ Transit locomotive engineer who drove a train that killed a Montvale woman has alleged in a lawsuit that borough police violated his civil rights by illegally forcing him to take a drug and alcohol test after the accident.

Engineer George Kreitz of Cranford alleges that police had no authority to test him after the April 20 accident, said a lawsuit filed against Montvale police and the borough in federal court in Newark this week.

Kreitz said he sounded the train's horn and applied its emergency brake, but could not avoid hitting the car at a road crossing. Its 68-year-old driver, Elsa Laga, was killed. No charges were ever brought against Kreitz.

Two Montvale officers, Bruce Czesniewski and David DiBlasi, boarded the train to investigate. DiBlasi conducted a field sobriety test on Kreitz and told him he "was OK," said the civil rights complaint.

Czesniewski then told Kreitz that he would have to go to the police station for blood and alcohol testing. But federal regulations only allow such testing after an accident if probable cause exists, the lawsuit said.

Kreitz and another NJ Transit official showed the officer the regulations, but Czesniewski pointed to discarded beer cans in the adjacent passenger car and said that he had probable cause. When Kreitz and the other official continued to protest, the officer "told them that if they continued to interfere, he would arrest everyone for obstruction of justice."

The officers read Kreitz his Miranda rights and eventually placed him in a holding cell, but told him he was not under arrest. He was forced to give a urine sample, and then was "secreted out of the rear of the police station" to a hospital for a blood test. The blood and alcohol tests were negative, said the complaint, filed by attorney Lawrence M. Mann of Washington, D.C.

Mann works for the United Transportation Union, which represents Kreitz and joined him in the lawsuit. Mann said he has successfully filed a dozen similar lawsuits around the country in the past decade.

"This case is particularly egregious," Mann said. "Had the police officer not been shown the regulations, he could have said, 'I didn't know that.' He was also told by the official from the railroad that he shouldn't be doing that."

Local police, he said, "simply do not understand the law on this issue, and once we apprise them, they wake up. It's a matter of education."

The lawsuit has been filed against Czesniewski, DiBlasi, the Police Department, and the borough of Montvale. It seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages, and alleges that Kreitz's constitutional rights were violated.

The officers and Montvale Police Chief Joseph Marigliani were not working Friday and could not be reached for comment, said Capt. James Ewing. Borough Attorney John Stern and Borough Administrator Helene Fall also could not be reached.

A spokeswoman for NJ Transit, Donna Bodden, said that a senior railroad foreman on the scene that night checked Kreitz and found no probable cause of drug or alcohol use.

"There was no reason to take him," Bodden said. "I'm not sure of all the details of what happened that night, but generally the police are not allowed to just take an engineer into custody."

Kreitz, 44, has been an NJ Transit employee for nearly 15 years.

WASHINGTON -- Wheat is piling up on the ground in Kansas. The corn harvest is just around the corner and expected to come in as the second biggest ever.

But once again, rail car delivery is backlogged.

"We're bracing ourselves,'' said Linda Donovan, co-manager of the Norton County Co-Op in northwest Kansas.

Sound familiar? In farm country, the memory of the congestion that choked shipping throughout the West last fall is only too fresh.

But this is not the rail crisis of 1997, when gridlock driven by Union Pacific Corp.'s takeover of Southern Pacific Rail Corp. stranded Midwestern grain crops, clogged California ports and forced the temporary idling of some Gulf Coast petrochemical plants, with an economic toll estimated as high as $4 billion.

The biggest difference this year is that in many cases, the grain has nowhere to go. Abundant global supplies and sagging exports to financially troubled Asia have beaten down already-low prices, forcing farmers to stockpile back-to-back, bumper wheat harvests. The storage shortage appears worst in Kansas and parts of Iowa, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

"The point is, if we moved every car that we had to market, there isn't a market for all of it. That's the problem,'' Union Pacific Railroad spokesman Ed Trandahl said.

Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad, was under orders to cooperate with competitors from last Oct. 31 until federal regulators ruled last month they could no longer force UP to keep giving business to other rail carriers. Most agree that while service has not returned to normal, the emergency is over.

"Even if the railroads perform most admirably, there still will be grain on the ground this year,'' said Bill Brendan of the U.S. Agriculture Department's transportation and marketing division. "Major export markets are shut down in the midst of a huge economic crisis right now.''

Price and lack of export markets are factors, conceded Rep. Jerry Moran, a Republican who represents 66 western Kansas counties in the House.

"But every elevator operator tells me he or she has a place to go with the grain, if they could just get the railroads to move it,'' Moran said. "We continue to get calls from shippers saying they can't get any cars.''

As of last Tuesday, Kansas recorded 430,200 bushels of wheat on the ground or in temporary storage. The state agriculture department said that may soar to anywhere from 75 million to 100 million bushels -- more than triple the 31 million bushels Kansas farmers dumped last year.

Moran has sponsored a measure nudging the federal Surface Transportation Board to make the railroad industry more competitive, but he concedes that Congress is unlikely to act this year.

Competition has been a rallying cry of shippers and some lawmakers, who blame the board along with the railroads for approving the UP-Southern Pacific in the first place -- and for refusing last month to extend the emergency remedies.

"What it comes down to is the ability of the railroad to operate properly,'' said Tom White, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads. "It's hard to see what legislation can do about that.''

UP has a backlog of a few hundred rail cars, while car delivery from Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Co. is several days behind. But the railroads offer evidence that service has improved.

Burlington Northern loaded 43,989 grain cars in Kansas through July, compared with 26,895 cars at that point last summer.

MINNEAPOLIS -- On the second full day of the Northwest Airlines pilots strike, negotiators from both sides remained in their trenches as the shutdown of the nation's fourth-largest airline continued to inconvenience tens of thousands of travelers.

While airport officials in Northwest's hubs prepared for the first business day without the carrier, no new talks were scheduled and no new offers were put forward. Instead, the two sides independently strove to clarify their positions on unresolved issues of pay and the use of regional jets.

Meanwhile, National Mediation Board Chairwoman Maggie Jacobsen, who had been directing pilot contract talks in the Twin Cities before they collapsed, returned Sunday to Washington.

The Northwest Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) was duplicating a new video outlining the issues that polarized negotiators when they last met Friday afternoon.

The video was expected to reach ALPA's 6,000 members by Tuesday.

Jon Austin, a spokesman for Eagan-based Northwest, drafted a summary of pay proposals, which he distributed to reporters via e-mail. He said the strike is about money and the pilots' negotiating philosophy of wanting an industry-leading contract. Based on the latest wage rate proposals, the two sides are separated by about $70 million per year -- a sum Northwest easily will lose if the strike lasts a week. The two sides are separated by another $30 million when comparing their proposals on lump-sum retroactive pay.

ALPA leaders cite regional jets as one of the chief sticking points in contract negotiations. Pilots view the fast, quiet aircraft as a threat to their jobs because they are proliferating in the industry, flown by lower-paid pilots at regional carriers such as Mesaba Airlines, Northwest's biggest Airlink partner.

There are four major elements in the compensation dispute between Northwest and ALPA: wage rates, B-scale (a lower pay scale for new hires), retroactive pay and profit-sharing.

Northwest has offered pilots a four-year package: a 3 percent raise at the date of signing, followed by raises of 2 percent, 1.5 percent, and 2.5 percent in succeeding years, an average of 2 percent per year. In percentage terms, that's less than the company offered its machinists in a tentative agreement that was overwhelming rejected by the rank and file on July 29.

ALPA wants a three-year deal with a 7 percent raise on date of signing followed by two 3.5 percent raises.

Another important issue is the union's desire to eliminate the company's B-scale pay rates, which ALPA has described as the lowest in the industry. The lower-tiered rates for new hires last five years at Northwest, but the company has proposed shortening that to three years over the four-year proposed contract. Omodt said pilots at American, Continental, TWA and US Airways eliminated the B-scale in their last contracts.

On the issue of profit-sharing, the pilots are asking for a maximum payment of 6 percent of a pilot's annual taxable income while Northwest is willing to pay up to 5 percent. A more important difference is that the company plan is triggered by financial targets more difficult for Northwest to reach than the targets proposed by pilots.

On the issue of retroactive pay (pilots have gone nearly two years without a new contract), Northwest has offered a lump-sum payment of 3.5 percent of annual pay, which would total about $57 million. ALPA has asked for a 5.5 percent lump sum that would total about $86 million.

In crafting its proposal on regional jets, ALPA looked at American Airlines and United Airlines, each at least a third bigger than Northwest and each deploying about 65 regional jets. Under the pilots' proposal, Northwest could quickly match that level if it also expanded its own fleet of narrow-body jets from 332 to 362 by Dec. 31, 2002.

But Northwest wants the freedom to add even more regional jets -- easily building to 81 over four years under terms of its own proposal. Austin said Delta Air Lines is fed by a regional carrier with many more regional jets than United or American and Delta has no limits on regional jets.

Under ALPA's proposal Northwest could deploy 66 regional jets while flying 362 narrow-bodies. Under the company's proposal, Northwest could deploy 81 regional jets while flying 347 narrow-bodies.

ALPA's proposal would cap the regional jet fleet at 66, while there would be no limit on regional jet growth under the Northwest proposal -- as long as Northwest kept adding one narrow-body plane for each new regional jet past 81.

WASHINGTON -- The Surface Transportation Board (STB) will put a controversial Louisiana rail construction proposal by the Kansas City Southern Railway on hold because of the carrier's long-term marketing agreement with former opponent Illinois Central Railroad.

Last week's decision suggests that a nine-mile track construction project by KCS to reach three chemical plants located on Illinois Central would not be built because the KCS will gain future access to those plants over existing IC lines.

The construction plan had been opposed by citizens in Ascension Parish, where the plants in the vicinity of Geismar and Gonzales, La. are located.

STB said it would be inappropriate to take further action on the original plan because the marketing agreement gives KCS access to the three plants in the fall of 2000 if the proposed merger of IC and Canadian National Railway, filed last month, is approved by STB.

Access through the agreement likely would be completed before the KCS received final approval to build a track extension following environmental review procedures, the agency said.

Hobos gather in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Missouri-- About 200 hobos are expected to gather in Kansas City, Missouri this week in hopes of making peace with the railroads.

The "Kansas City Star'' reports that the hobos want to bring back what they call the "good-old-days''... when they could ride the rails without fear. One hobo said they would agree not to damage or pilfer anything on the trains if the railroad companies would just let them ride.

Word of this week's gathering was reportedly spread over the Hobo Internet... a collection of rail riders who have e-mail addresses in various public libraries.

US West, union reach settlement

DENVER -- U-S West phone service could be getting back to normal soon now that the regional phone company and the Communications Workers of America have reached a tentative agreement on a new, three-year contract.

The agreement includes a pay raise totaling almost eleven-percent, a voluntary pay-for-performance plan, and reductions in mandatory overtime. The deal ends a more than two-week-old strike by 34,000 U-S West workers in 13 states. The rank-and-file will vote on the deal after Labor Day.

Derailment spills tons of grain

JAVA, Montana -- There has been another train derailment along the southern edge of Glacier National Park.

More than two-dozen cars loaded with barley derailed yesterday near the small town of Java. The derailment also started two small fires.

Park officials say both fires covered about 20 acres of steep terrain. There were no injuries in the derailment, but it did close the main rail line. Amtrak is busing passengers both ways between Shelby and Spokane, Washington.

Judge to decide on light-rail wording

PORTLAND -- Voters will decide this fall on a proposed extension of Portland's light rail service, but the way the proposal is described on the ballot will be decided tomorrow in a court hearing.