Train engineer didn’t see signs before crash
SEATTLE — The engineer on the Amtrak train that derailed south of Tacoma, Wash., in December, killing three people and injuring dozens, said he didn’t see or didn’t recognize the signposts and signals along the track indicating a drastic drop in the speed limit, a new report from federal investigators says.
It was only the engineer’s second time driving a train in that direction on a newly opened stretch of track, known as the Point Defiance Bypass.
The National Transportation Safety Board interviewed the 55-year-old engineer last week, about a month after the deadly crash. Both the engineer and a qualifying conductor, who was in the locomotive to familiarize himself with the new track, suffered serious injuries, which delayed their interviews, the NTSB said.
The train was going nearly 80 miles per hour when it crashed on a curve where the speed limit was 30 miles per hour.
In the five weeks before the crash, the engineer, whose name hasn’t been released, had completed seven to 10 “observational trips” in a locomotive on the new stretch of track, the NTSB said. He had also completed three trips in which he was operating the locomotive.
Two of those trips were driving northbound, the NTSB said. He had only completed one training trip driving the locomotive south — the direction it was going when it crashed. What’s more, when he saw a signal at the curve, he mistook it for a different one.
Signs mark the decreased speed limit two miles ahead of the curve and right at the curve, which is milepost 19.8.
The engineer, who was hired by Amtrak as a conductor in 2004 and was promoted to engineer in 2013, said that when the train passed milepost 15.5 it was traveling at the speed limit, about 79 miles per hour.
“The engineer told investigators that he was aware that the curve with the 30 mph speed restriction was at milepost 19.8, and that he had planned to initiate braking about one mile prior to the curve,” the NTSB report says. “The engineer said that he saw mileposts 16 and 17 but didn’t recall seeing milepost 18 or the 30 mph advance speed sign, which was posted two miles ahead of the speedrestricted curve.