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Report: At least 6 dead after Amtrak train derails from bridge onto Interstate 5 near Olympia
Several people were killed Monday morning when an Amtrak train derailed and fell off a bridge over Interstate 5 near Mounts Road between Lakewood and Olympia. The Associated Press, citing an unnamed U.S. official, reported that at least six people were killed in the crash. Gov. Jay Inslee has called a state of emergency in response to the derailment.
Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer told news media that there were fatalities on the train and that motorists had been injured, but not killed. A total of 77 people were sent to hospitals in Pierce and Thurston counties, according to CHI Franciscan Health, which operates numerous hospitals in Western Washington. Four of the injured are "level red" patients, with critical injuries. The injured are being taken to St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, St. Claire Hospital in Lakewood, St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor and Tacoma General Hospital and Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia.
There were 78 passengers and five crew members on the train when it derailed, according to Amtrak.
The train was running on a new, faster service route using a new bypass. This was the first day that the new route was used.
Also at CNN. Amtrak statement about service disruption.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:46AM (3 children)
If your brand new tracks cannot handle trains going as fast as our oldest slowest trains, you really need to start pouring money into infrastructure.
(Score: 5, Informative) by kazzie on Tuesday December 19 2017, @10:58AM (2 children)
New track on an old bridge. It sounds like we can discount a fault on one of the rails, but there is reportedly a significantly lower speed limit at that point, and that must be there for a reason.
Two likely reasons for a speed limit are a weight limit on the railway bridge (slow down to avoid damaging the bridge), and the fact that the bridge is on a curve (slow down to avoid flying off the rails). (A partial derailment could have happened some miles up the track, and only led to a complete derailment where the track curved over the bridge.
But this quote from AP [apnews.com] is the most telling I've found:
This situation seems to have similarities to the tram derailment in London in 2016 [wikipedia.org] and Santiago de Compostella train derailment in 2013 [wikipedia.org], where, for varying reasons, the train had not slowed down enough to go around a curve without derailing.
There are technologies that can be installed to ensure that if a driver doesn't slow down at a speed restriction the brakes get applied automatically. The common version in the UK is Automatic Train Protection [wikipedia.org], which is installed on some high-speed train lines. Newer technologies such as Positive Train Conrtol (North America) and the European Rail Traffic Management System are being developed and implemented, but ATP, PTC and ERTMS are expensive technologies. Money is always an issue with these things.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Tuesday December 19 2017, @07:52PM (1 child)
Adding Spuyten Duyvil in New York City to your list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2013_Spuyten_Duyvil_derailment [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:29PM
Thanks. Most of my railway knowledge is on the eastern side of the pond; I'd not heard of Spuyten Duyvil. (Now I'll go off and work out how to pronounce it...)