Penn Station Derailment - 7/6/17

Another derailment. NJ Transit NJ Coast line train, scheduled to arrive at 8:53pm. Single level train, led by an ALP-46. Appears only the lead car behind the loco derailed. West of track 10/11 area in A Interlocking. Seems to be similar area where last incident occurred.

Interestingly, the speed restrictions were lifted this week ahead of the massive rebuild project.

It's going to be a looong summer for Amtrak's track dept.

Another day, another derailment... I guess this is no longer shocking.

Do you think Amtrak can really rebuild most of the tracks and switches in less than two months?

I notice they had all trains running much sooner than following the NJ Transit derailment in April. Anyone know if the passengers were able to walk thru the train to get off, or if another train pulled up along side to rescue? Engine number?
Andy

twropr wrote:I notice they had all trains running much sooner than following the NJ Transit derailment in April. Anyone know if the passengers were able to walk thru the train to get off, or if another train pulled up along side to rescue? Engine number?
Andy

Rescue train was brought in to evacuate. Took two hours. I heard the first car that derailed was empty. No one walked through as the train hadn't yet platformed.

Today I left on Track 11 and I believe the switch was inoperable where the derailment occurred, causing some delays during rush hour.

Still no word on a cause yet.

Wonder if NJT will try to blame Amtrak for this,unless there's a bad wheelset found on the car that derailed!

if uve ever walked to the west end of the platforms for tracks 10 or 11, and looked at the switches....everything is sooooo worn. switch points move up and down when travelled over. And lateral forces at switches can be high, cause cars literally move sideways at times because of the close proximity of lots of slip switches. And with the switches having movable frogs, these are just so many moving parts that get worn down.. I'm surprised the speed limit hasnt been 5 or 10 mph. Unless a piece of rail turned under a car, I'd say chances are its a picked switch. Its surprising it doesnt happen more often... I also wudnt be surprised if a lot of engineers actually go thru the ladder tracks at 10 mph, cause they know the track is rough.

There was a speed restriction set in place after the last derailment - this restriction was lifted this past Monday.

The track work involves the complete replacement of switches/ties/etc in "A interlocking" since some of the components are decades old.