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| New rail lines are stacked up in an area near the site where a deadly train derailment occurred earlier in the week, Friday, May 15, 2015, in Philadelphia. Amtrak is working to restore Northeast Corridor rail service between New York City and Philadelphia. Service was suspended after a train derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, killing eight passengers and injuring more than 200. |
PHILADELPHIA
(AP) -- The Amtrak train that derailed along the nation's busiest tracks
may have been struck by an object in the moments before it crashed,
investigators said Friday, raising new questions about the deadly
accident.
National Transportation Safety Board
member Robert Sumwalt said an assistant conductor told investigators
that she heard Amtrak engineer Brandon Bostian talking over the radio
with an engineer for a regional railroad just before the crash.
The
regional engineer, who was in the same area as the Amtrak train, said
his train had been hit by a rock or some other projectile. The conductor
heard Bostian say the same had happened to his Amtrak train, according
to Sumwalt.
The windshield of the Amtrak train
was shattered in the accident but one area of glass had a breakage
pattern that could be consistent with being hit by an object, he said,
and the FBI is investigating.
The Southeastern
Pennsylvania Transportation Authority does not yet know what caused the
damage to its train that night, said Jerri Williams, a spokeswoman for
the agency.
SEPTA trains traveling through the
area - including one of the poorest and most violent parts of the city -
have had projectiles thrown at them in the past, whether by vandals or
teenagers, she said. It was unusual that the SEPTA train was forced to
stop on Tuesday night.
The deadly Amtrak wreck
has made it clear that despite the train industry's widespread use of
electronic signals, sensors and warning systems, safety still sometimes
comes down to the knowledge and experience of the engineer at the
controls.
Those skills would have been
critical on the curve where the New York-bound train derailed, killing
eight and injuring more than 200 in the deadliest U.S. train accident in
nearly six years.
Instead of high-tech
signals or automatic controls, engineers on that stretch of track have
to rely on their familiarity with the route and a printed timetable they
carry with them, not unlike engineers a century ago.
"We're
depending heavily on the human engineer to correctly obey and interpret
the signals that he sees and also speed limits and other operating
requirements," said David B. Clarke, a railroad expert at the University
of Tennessee.
The engineer of the train has told investigators that he does not recall the moments leading up to Tuesday night's crash.
The conductor told the NTSB in an interview Friday that he felt comfortable with the train and was not fatigued, Sumwalt said.
In
the minute before the derailment, the Amtrak train accelerated from 70
mph to more than 100 mph, even though the curve where it came off the
tracks has a maximum speed of 50 mph.
Experts
say the railroad's signaling system would have slowed the train
automatically if it had hit the maximum speed allowed on the line, but
older cab-signal and train-control systems do not respond to localized
speed restrictions.
Investigators are also conducting drug tests. Bostian's lawyer has said he was not using drugs or alcohol.
Preliminary checks have not found any pre-existing problems with the train, the rail line or the signals.
Because
of his experience, Bostian should have known the route, even if there's
not so much as a speed limit sign on the side of the tracks, said
Howard Spier, a Miami-based lawyer who is a former president of the
Academy of Rail Labor Attorneys.
"It's engrained in them. He knew it," Spier said. "I'm convinced he knew he was entering a speed-restrictive curve."
The
wreck has raised questions about positive train control, a system that
automatically brakes trains going too fast. It is installed on the
tracks where the train derailed, but it had not been turned on because
further testing was needed, Amtrak President Joseph Boardman said.
Boardman
said this week that he intends to have the system running across Amtrak
by the end of this year, as Congress mandated back in 2008.
The
system is already operating in other parts of the Northeast Corridor,
the busy stretch of tracks between Boston and Washington. An older, less
robust automatic-control system is in place for southbound trains in
the same area as the derailment.
The last
wrecked railcars from the deadly accident were removed Friday as Amtrak
prepares to resume service on the line next week.
Also
Friday, the first funeral was held for one of those killed in the
wreck. U.S. Naval Academy midshipman Justin Zemser, 20, was laid to rest
on Long Island. About 150 classmates from the academy joined his family
and students from his New York City high school.
