Tag: amtrak 188
NTSB: Engineer Was Not Talking, Texting When Amtrak Train Derailed

NTSB: Engineer Was Not Talking, Texting When Amtrak Train Derailed

By Paul Nussbaum, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)

PHILADELPHIA — The engineer of Amtrak Train 188 was not talking or texting on his cellphone before the train’s deadly derailment in Philadelphia on May 12, the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.

The finding supported statements by the lawyer for engineer Brandon Bostian, 32, that the engineer’s cellphone was turned off and stowed in his bag during the trip from Washington, D.C., to New York.

However, NTSB vice chair Tho “Bella” Dinh-Zarr told a Senate committee Wednesday that investigators have not determined if the engineer was using an app or the phone for other purposes.

There was “no talking, texting or data usage involved,” said Dinh-Zarr. But, she added, “there are 400,000 pieces of data involved in the analysis. Because of the extent of that, things like use of an app or other use of the phone has not been determined. We are working with the records.”

“To determine whether the phone was in ‘airplane mode’ or was powered off, investigators in the NTSB laboratory in Washington have been examining the phone’s operating system, which contains more than 400,000 files of metadata,” the agency said in its statement Wednesday. “Investigators are obtaining a phone identical to the engineer’s phone as an exemplar model and will be running tests to validate the data.”

The NTSB’s determination heightened the mystery surrounding the cause of the accident: Why was the train traveling more than 100 miles per hour as it entered a curve where the speed limit was 50 miles per hour?

Eight people were killed and more than 200 injured in the crash.

Some engineers have speculated that Bostian may have lost track of his location, mistakenly believing he had already passed the Frankford Junction curve and was clear to open the throttle on the way to New York.

“Everybody at some point in their career has done that,” said one engineer, referring to the possibility of losing one’s place on a route. He spoke on the condition that he would not be named.

Engineers are required to memorize their routes and the speed limits and other standards, aided by signals in the locomotive cab and on the side of the track.

Speed limit signs often are not posted.

After the Train 188 wreck, the Federal Railroad Administration ordered Amtrak to post speed limit signs throughout the Northeast Corridor within 30 days, “with particular emphasis on additional signage at the curve locations” with sharp speed reductions, like Frankford Junction.

The head of the engineers’ union told a congressional committee last week that the lack of speed limit signs could prove to be a significant lapse.

“If we eventually learn that, for some reason, the engineer of Amtrak 188 became temporarily confused as to his location, it may be reasonable to conclude that the simple use of speed signs in the approach to the curve, as a reminder, may have prevented this accident,” said Dennis Pierce, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

“That would raise a question whether the decision not to post such signs was a human error that contributed to the accident.”

The NTSB said Wednesday that “analysis of the phone records does not indicate that any calls, texts, or data usage occurred during the time the engineer was operating the train.”

“Amtrak’s records confirm that the engineer did not access the train’s Wi-Fi system while he was operating the locomotive,” the report said.

The NTSB said the analysis of the engineer’s phone records was “more complicated than anticipated because the phone carrier has multiple systems that log different types of phone activity, some of which are based in different time zones.

“Investigators worked with the phone carrier to validate the time-stamps in several sets of records with activity from multiple time zones to correlate them all to the time zone in which the accident occurred,” the agency said.

(Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Jonathan Tamari contributed to this report.)

(c)2015 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Investigators examine the train derailment site on Wednesday, May 13, 2015, after a northbound Amtrak train crashed in the Port Richmond area of Philadelphia Tuesday night. (Alejandro A. Alvarez/Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS)

Full Rail Service Resumes At Site Of Fatal Amtrak Crash

Full Rail Service Resumes At Site Of Fatal Amtrak Crash

By Katherine Skiba, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Full Amtrak service has resumed in the nation’s busy Northeast rail corridor, almost a week after a derailment in Philadelphia killed eight passengers and injured more than 200.

Since the May 12 crash of an Amtrak train headed from Washington to New York City, Amtrak officials “have been working around the clock” to make repairs that would allow full service to resume through Philadelphia, Amtrak President and Chief Executive Joe Boardman said Sunday in a statement.

The possibility that a rock or other projectile hit Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188 moments before it derailed is one of many that safety officials are exploring as they seek a cause for the deadly accident, a top federal official said Sunday.

The FBI will be at the accident scene Monday to examine the wreckage and try to determine what may have hit the train, said Robert Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

So far, officials have interviewed dispatchers and listened to dispatch tapes and have “heard no communication at all from the Amtrak engineer to the dispatch center to say that something had struck his train,” Sumwalt said as he made the rounds of Sunday morning news programs. Nor did the engineer of a nearby commuter train that was struck recall any conversation between the crew of his train and Amtrak 188, he added.

“We’re just in the fact-finding stage of the investigation,” he said. “We’re just slowly starting to gather the information and then slowly start ruling things out.”

Sumwalt said crew members on the commuter train operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority reported being hit by a projectile. The NTSB does not know how many other trains had been struck, he said.

Sumwalt, a former airline pilot, said the investigation would have been “significantly” helped if the Amtrak train had been equipped with inward-facing video cameras.

Sumwalt urged that advanced technology, known as positive train control, be implemented soon to avoid future derailments. He called it “very troubling” that positive train control might not be installed on passenger railways until year’s end.

Positive train control utilizes GPS technology to monitor a train’s location and can enforce speed limits.

“We have seen countless accidents over the years that could have been prevented had positive train control been implemented,” Sumwalt said.

After the crash of a Metrolink commuter train in Southern California seven years ago, Congress ordered the nation’s rail operators to install positive train control by the end of this year. Progress toward that goal has been slow.

Amtrak is closer to achieving the goal than many other railroads, with the train controls installed on parts of the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, but not in the section where the derailment happened. Most of the nation’s freight lines have lagged behind, and several have asked Congress for an extension of the deadline.

Federal regulators have ordered Amtrak to install a less advanced system, known as automatic train control, before reopening the line through the area where the derailment took place. Amtrak officials have said they will do so.

(Staff writer Matt Pearce in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)

(c)2015 Tribune Co., Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: John H Gray via Flickr