Service to start Monday after Amtrak crash kills 2 near Philadelphia
Amtrak says it will operate regularly scheduled trains with delays possible on Monday after a derailment outside Philadelphia killed 2 and disrupted service.
Train 89 was heading from New York to Savannah, Georgia, at about 8 a.m. Sunday when it hit heavy equipment on the track track in Chester, knocking the lead engine off the rails. Officials say two Amtrak workers were killed and more than 30 passengers were sent to hospitals with injuries that weren’t life-threatening.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Ryan Frigo said Sunday evening that the data recorder and forward-facing and inward-facing video from the locomotive have been recovered. Train 89 was carrying more than 300 passengers and seven crew members.
Frigo confirmed that one of the two people killed was the operator of the equipment. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said a top Amtrak official told him that both people who died were Amtrak employees.
Businessman Steve Forbes says he was on the train.
Forbes told CSPAN’s “Book TV” by phone that he was in the next-to-last car when the train “made sudden jerks” as if it was about to make an abrupt stop Sunday morning.
The chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media said the train then made another abrupt stop. He said “everyone’s coffee was flying through the air,” and there was smoke and a smell as if the brakes were smoldering.
He said the most disconcerting thing was not knowing what was happening, as the PA system was knocked out and passengers were left to speculate for 20 or 25 minutes before anyone came back to tell them what had happened.
