HALIFAX, N.C. — A tractor-trailer with a 127-ton load, so big that it required a special permit and a state trooper escort, got stuck at a difficult railroad crossing with time enough to warn train dispatchers. But there is no indication that anyone alerted Amtrak before a passenger train slammed into it, injuring 55 people.
The truck was pulling an electrical distribution center nearly 16 feet tall and 16 feet wide, built by PCX Corp. in Clayton, N.C., for a customer in New Jersey.
‘‘It was a big project,’’ Dean A. Di Lillo, a PCX Corp. vice president, said Tuesday. He declined to put a value on the unit that was destroyed in Monday’s crash.
The load stretched for 164 feet, longer than half a football field, and required 13 axles to distribute the truck and load’s combined weight of 255,000 pounds, the permit shows.
The tractor-trailer followed a backroads route that included some extremely tight squeezes, including the sharp left turn in Halifax from a two-lane road over the tracks and onto another two-lane road, where it got stuck.
A clearly established protocol requires constant contact between a truck driver, the trooper escort, and the train dispatcher when trucks carry oversized cargo across tracks, a former federal railroad regulator said.
Protocol calls for troopers escorting trucks to ‘‘clear their routes and inform the railroad dispatchers what they’re doing,’’ said Steve Ditmeyer, a former Federal Railroad Administration official.