A federal investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has revealed that an Amtrak train that derailed and crashed in north Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 12, was traveling at 106 miles (171 kilometers) per hour, more than double the speed limit of 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour. The train was traveling from Washington, D.C., to New York City. At the time of the crash, it was on a portion of track that curved sharply to the left. The engineer applied the emergency brake, which slowed the train only minimally. At least eight people on board the train were killed, and more than 200 were injured. Several still had not been accounted for as of Thursday, May 14.

Emergency personnel work at the scene of a deadly train derailment in Philadelphia on Wednesday, May 13, 2015. The Amtrak train, headed to New York City, derailed and crashed in Philadelphia the previous night, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 200. Credit: AP Photo

Investigators had not determined why the train was traveling so fast. Officials said that a kind of track technology called positive train control (PTC) could have prevented the accident. Using Global Positioning System (GPS), wireless radio, and computers, positive train control monitors trains and can slow or even stop them. The portion of the Northeast Corridor route where Tuesday night’s accident occurred did not have such a system installed. Federal law requires passenger and freight railroads to have PTC systems working by the end of 2015, but such systems cost billions of dollars.

The lawyer for the engineer, Brandon Bostian, stated that his client had no memory of the actual crash and no explanation for it. Bostian remembered being thrown about and calling 911 following the derailment. Officials of the NTSB said they did not know yet whether the train had accelerated steadily or suddenly to reach 106 miles per hour. Besides the high speed of the train, they were investigating such factors as track conditions, the mechanical condition of the train, and train signals.

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February 17, 2015

A freight train carrying more than 100 tanker cars of crude oil derailed yesterday in West Virginia, sparking a fire that is still burning today. Several of the cars ignited in the derailment, causing explosions and sending flames shooting some 300 feet (91 meters) into the air. Because of the intense heat and smoke from the burning oil, firefighters are allowing the fire to burn out on its own. Hundreds of families who lived nearby were evacuated to a shelter. Several of the train cars derailed into the Kanawha River, causing authorities to close two water treatment facilities that draw water from the river. The train, operated by CSX Corporation, was transporting crude oil from the Bakken oil shale formation in North Dakota to a shipping depot in Yorktown, Virginia.

Tanker cars move three-quarters of the oil produced in the Bakken shale oil fields. Credit: © LeksusTuss/Shutterstock

Oil was discovered in the Bakken area in the 1950′s, but the cost of extracting it from the shale rock formation made it costly. In the 2000′s, hydraulic fracturing (or fracking for short) became a much cheaper way to extract oil from shale rock. The amount of oil now produced in the Bakken fields far exceeds what can be handled by a nearby pipeline, however, so approximately three-quarters of Bakken oil is transported by rail.

Rail lines sometimes run through areas where many people live, and some transportation experts have been concerned about the safety of moving such large amounts of oil by rail. A study last year showed that oil from the Bakken site is more volatile (liable to explode) than other types of oil.

Many types of dangerous chemicals moved by train are carried in special pressurized cars designed to resist rupturing. The cars used to transport oil, however, have no such safety system. After a train derailed in downtown Lac-Megantic in Quebec, Canada, in July 2013, killing 47 people, updating regulations for tanker car safety became more urgent. The U.S. Transportation Department is currently studying proposed safety regulations concerning shipping oil by rail.

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• Transportation (2013-a Back in Time article)

July 9, 2013

On July 6, a run-away train with more than 70 crude-oil tanker cars derailed in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, triggering an enormous explosion. At least 15 people are known dead and 60 others are missing, feared dead. As many as 30 buildings were destroyed in the blast, including the town grocery and library. The tankers, en route from the Bakken oil field in North Dakota to a refinery in New Brunswick, carried pressurized crude oil. Fires from the massive explosion forced the evacuation of about 2,000 of the town’s 6,000 residents.

Yesterday, officials learned that the train—parked outside Nantes, a town 8 miles (12 kilometers) west of Lac-Megantic, during an overnight driver shift-change—started rolling downhill on empty tracks just minutes after firemen had extinguished a blaze in one of its locomotives. “About five minutes after the firemen left, I felt the vibration of a train moving down the track,” eyewitness Andre Gendron told Reuters news service yesterday. “I then saw the train move by without its lights on.” Reuters also reported that Nantes Fire Chief Patrick Lambert confirmed that his crew had switched off the locomotive late on July 5 while putting out a “good-sized” blaze in the motor. “Our protocol calls for us to shut down an engine because it is the only way to stop the fuel from circulating into the fire,” he noted.

In a diesel-electric locomotive, an air compressor runs off the diesel engine and keeps the locomotive’s brakes charged and working. When a locomotive is shut down, its brakes will eventually cease to function. (Electro-Motive Division of General Motors Corporation-World Book diagram)

According to the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic (MM&A) Railway, the engineer parked the train in Nantes on July 5, but left one locomotive running to ensure the air brakes worked properly. “If the operating locomotive is shut down, there’s nothing left to keep the brakes charged up, and the brake pressure will drop finally to the point where they can’t be held in place any longer,” MM&A railroad chairman Ed Burkhardt told the Toronto Star newspaper.