Derailed US train was travelling more than twice the speed limit
The train that plunged off an overpass south of Seattle killing at least three people was going 50mph over the speed limit when it derailed.
The data recorder in the rear locomotive showed the train was travelling at 80mph in a 30mph zone when it derailed along a curve on a bridge, spilling some of its carriages on to a main road below.
Bella Dinh-zarr, a US national transportation safety board member, said it was not yet known what caused the train to run off the rails and it was too early to say why it was going so fast.
She said investigators would talk to the driver and other crew members.
The driver, whose name was not released, was reported to be bleeding from the head after the wreck.
The train, carrying 85 passengers and crew members, was making the inaugural run along a fast new bypass route that was created by refurbishing freight tracks alongside Interstate 5.
The 15-mile, $181 million project was aimed at speeding up service by bypassing a route with a number of curves, single-track tunnels and freight traffic.
Positive train control – technology that can automatically slow or stop a speeding train – was not in use on that stretch of track.
Regulators have been pressing railroads for years to install suchtechnology,butthedeadline had been extended repeatedly at the industry’s request and is now the end of 2018.
The accident left mangled train carriages up on top of each other, with one hanging precariously over the road.
The screech and clang of metal was followed by silence, then screams, as the injured cried out to rescuers and motorists pulled over and rushed to help.
More than 70 people were injured in the incident, ten of them seriously.
Train passenger Emma Shafer found herself at a 45-degree angle, staring at the seats in front of her that had come loose and swung around.
“It felt oddly silent after the actual crashing,” she said. “Then there was people screaming because their leg was messed up. I don’t know if I actually heard the sirens, but they were there.”
One of the dead was identified as Zack Willhoite, a customer service employee at a local transit agency and a railroad buff excited to be on the first passenger run of the new route.
He was a member of All Aboard Washington, an organisation of rail advocates.
In 2015, an Amtrak train travelling at twice the 50mph speed limit ran off the rails along a sharp curve in central Philadelphia, killing eight people.