Northeast Regional 188 - Accident In Philadelphia

[nomis]

SEPTA train hit by projectile minutes before Amtrak crash
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150 ... crash.html

At about 9:25 p.m. Tuesday, SEPTA's northbound Train 769, en route to Trenton on tracks on the Northeast Corridor beside the Amtrak rails, was struck by "an unknown projectile" that broke the engineer's window, SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams said.

No injuries were reported and the train was held at the North Philadelphia station. The 80 passengers were transferred to buses.

About three minutes later and four miles away, near Frankford Junction, Amtrak's northbound Train 188 derailed on the Northeast Corridor tracks, killing at least six and injuring scores.

[uzplayer]

Surveillance Video is out.

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/nati ... rai/nmFmJ/

[amtrakhogger]

amtrakhogger, r40, ThirdRail, you guys alright?

Ok.

[pumpers]

deleted by poster 2 minutes after posting, nevermind!

[nomis]

The tower that looks like it did the most damage is the missing one ... Look at the left center, at the 6th car of the consist (2nd from left) and you will see a Cat tower sheared at it's base and leaning into the 6th coach. The 'east/south' side upright is also there, but bent over below that coach. On Bing, it looks like it is a cat pole, and doesn't support the large feeder wires.

[pumpers]

The tower that looks like it did the most damage is the missing one ... Look at the left center, at the 6th car of the consist (2nd from left) and you will see a Cat tower sheared at it's base and leaning into the 6th coach. The 'east/south' side upright is also there, but bent over below that coach.

You are right probably - I realized the same thing just after I posted and then deleted my post, but you beat me to it in replying. JS

[jamesinclair]

CNN is reporting the last car of the train as the "caboose"

That pretty much sums up CNN and most large media outlets.

If anyone has info on affected services and alternate routes between PA and NJ please link them here. I have some co-workers scrambling to figure out how they will get in tomorrow, and you folks seem to have a good beat on that kind of thing.

Patco -> River Line -> NEC from Trenton

NJ Transit is honoring Amtrak tickets for the entire length. Note that River Line service ends early (9pm)

SEPTA is running extra trains on the West Trenton Line (but youll need a cab between West Trenton and Trenton if thats where youre going)

And theres all the private bus lines direct between Philadelphia and NYC (Bolt, Mega, Greyhound etc)

[Fishrrman]

litz wrote above:
[[ Presumably, these Sprinters have event recorders ... do they have witness cameras too? ]]

Of course, they all do now.
The new engines may even have cab "interior" cameras, as well.

The folks at Amtrak already know what happened, just by playing back the event recorder data.

Zone 2 wasn't my territory. I was a Zone 1 guy.
I'll -guess- that there are some sharp curves and important slowdowns there.

This looks similar to the Bridgeport wreck of The Federal (think that was the train) back in the 1950's. Train approaching an important slowdown, doesn't slow down, jumps curve, ends up in freight yard. BTW, I knew the fellow who was the firemen in that wreck, I was -his- fireman after he grew old. Noel Weaver knew him, too.

There are some curves you just can't afford to miss.

What happened to all the noise about "positive train control systems" that were going to make wrecks like this impossible?

[Jeff Smith]

Doesn't the NEC have automatic protection for curves with speed restrictions like this? I'm not familiar with all the terminology so I may be saying that all wrong. But I thought if you approached a curve such as this going to fast, it would automatically slow down. Seems like multiple layers of "that shouldn't happen" would prevent hitting a curve like this fast enough to derail. Or I could be all wrong.

...[/curiosity]

This is a great point. I believe this would be called a "penalty" application. I would hope ACSES has this built in. The issue, I think, is that such systems may be signal dependent/meant to prevent collisions, and do not apply to speed restrictions. If that's the case, the solution would be to add a signal to areas with permanent speed restrictions.

I'm sure we'll know in short order what the probably cause was. And we're doing a good job so far of not jumping to conclusions on cause, and laying blame. Going back to the MNRR Spuyten Duyvil incident, everyone jumped on the blame the engineer bandwagon way too early. Let's not do that here.

[KevinD]

I counted 4.5 seconds for a 7 car train to pass the camera. That's not excessively high speed in my book.

[pumpers]

I counted 4.5 seconds for a 7 car train to pass the camera. That's not excessively high speed in my book.

Assuming 85 feet per car, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amfleet" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, that is 90 mph. JS
EDIT: If the Amtrak Train tracker speed of 106 mph just short of the crash site (posted top of p. 7) is accurate, 90 mph sounds about right given reports there was sharp braking just before the incident.

[SwingMan]

Considering it's a 50mph curve, the train appeared to be going quite fast.

[jonnhrr]

CNN is reporting the last car of the train as the "caboose"

That pretty much sums up CNN and most large media outlets.

If anyone has info on affected services and alternate routes between PA and NJ please link them here. I have some co-workers scrambling to figure out how they will get in tomorrow, and you folks seem to have a good beat on that kind of thing.

Patco -> River Line -> NEC from Trenton

NJ Transit is honoring Amtrak tickets for the entire length. Note that River Line service ends early (9pm)

SEPTA is running extra trains on the West Trenton Line (but youll need a cab between West Trenton and Trenton if thats where youre going)

And theres all the private bus lines direct between Philadelphia and NYC (Bolt, Mega, Greyhound etc)

Besides the cab, there is #608 bus between West Trenton and Trenton TC, as I noted above.

[jonnhrr]

I noticed on Amtrak site that Florida trains between NY/PHL and Florida canceled for today but still show for tomorrow.

I wonder if (assuming they don't have at least partial service PHL - NYP back up) they will originate these trains in Washington, since Philly probably has limited servicing facilities.

Jon

[TrainPhotos]

608+west trenton and patco. Sounds crowded based on what I'm hearing...

Thank you both!