Sabotage In Chicago?

The FBI is investigating the removal of a dozen railroad spikes from a set of tracks in Chicago. These are the spikes that hold the rails in place, and removal of a lot of them in a small section of track is very dangerous. The FBI is treating it as deliberate sabotage.

The spikes hold down metal plates that bind the rails to wooden ties underneath.

"If a sufficient number of spikes are removed in a contained location, there's the potential for the rail to shift, which would lead to disastrous results and train derailment," said Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Steve Kulm.

Metra workers discovered the missing spikes on Monday and notified police and federal authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, which investigates threats to planes and trains.

The FBI said it was conducting a criminal investigation into "sabotage." FBI spokesman Ross Rice said agents also were checking for possible connections to a domestic violence case involving a Metra engineer.

"No one has claimed responsibility or called in a threat," Rice said. "No similar incident has been reported to us in the metropolitan area. This is a serious incident, and we are aggressively investigating."

Shots were fired at two different trains on the same section of track earlier this year. There is no evidence at this time that this is terror related. The section of track is apparently a heavily used one and this really could have been ugly if a train had derailed at a high rate of speed.