Investigators seek cause of deadly Montana train derailment

JOPLIN: Federal investigators are seeking the cause of an Amtrak train derailment near a switch on tracks in the middle of vast farmland in far northern Montana that killed three people and left seven hospitalised over the weekend.

The westbound Empire Builder was travelling from Chicago to Seattle when it left the tracks about 4pm on Saturday near Joplin, a town of about 200.

Amtrak spokesman Jason Abrams said the train was carrying about 141 passengers and 16 crew members. It had two locomotives and 10 cars, eight of which derailed, with some tipping onto their sides.

Trevor Fossen was first on the scene. The Joplin resident was on a dirt road near the tracks on Saturday when he saw “a wall of dust” hundreds of feet high.

“I saw the train had derailed,” said Fossen.

He called his brother to bring ladders for people who couldn’t get down after exiting through the windows of cars resting on their sides.

Passenger Jacob Cordeiro from Rhode Island was traveling with his father to Seattle to celebrate his college graduation.

“I was in one of the front cars and we got thrown from one side of the train to the other,” he told MSNBC.

He said the train left the tracks near a switch where two tracks narrow to one but did not fall over.

Railroad safety expert David Clarke, director of the Centre for Transportation Research at the University of Tennessee, said the two locomotives and two cars at the front of the train reached the switch and continued on the track, but the remaining eight cars derailed.

He said it was unclear whether some of the last cars moved onto the second track.