Philadelphia crash: Train travelling at double the speed limit

The train that crashed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night having derailed on a bend, killing at least seven people, was travelling at 106 miles per hour (170km/h) – more than double the speed limit on that part of the line.

The engine on the Northeast Regional 188 train and all seven passenger carriages left the tracks at 9.23pm on Tuesday at a tight bend at Frankford Junction, just north of Philadelphia after leaving the city.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that the train, which was travelling from Washington to New York, was moving at 106 miles per hour as it headed into a bend in a rail zone with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour.

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The mayor of Philadelphia, confirmed at least five fatalities on the Northeast Regional 188, which left the tracks around 9.20pm and the train’s engine and six carriages overturned. A mother and children observe emergency personnel work on the wreckage. Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images

The emergency brakes were applied by the driver just seconds before the crash, slowing the locomotive by just four miles per hour. It was travelling too fast to navigate the sharp turn safely.

More than 200 people were injured, including eight critically, on the train running on the busiest rail corridor in the United States.

The route carried 11.6 million passengers last year and has 2,200 trains operating on the line from Washington to Boston every day.

Among the dead were US naval academy student Justin Zemser (21) of Queens, New York, who was on leave, and an employee of the Associated Press news agency, Jim Gaines (48), who was returning to his home in Plainsboro, New Jersey.

Rachel Jacobs, chief executive of Philadelphia-based educational technology company ApprenNet, was on her way home to her family in New York and was reported missing.

Investigators examining the train’s “event recorders” or black-box data recorders, were reported by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times to have found that the train had been travelling at least 160km/h, twice the speed limit in that part of the rail line.

People were shown leaving the train wreckage bloodied and shaken as passengers were thrown about in the twisted carriages and hit by flying seats, luggage and other debris.

“It wobbled at first and then went off the tracks,” former US congressman Patrick Murphy, a passenger on the train, told NBC’s Philadelphia news channel. “There were some pretty banged-up people. One guy next to me was passed out.”

Police and firefighters picked through the twisted metal wreckage of destroyed rail cars and overturned carriages as the Philadelphia emergency services sought to confirm the number of dead and injured.

“It’s an absolute, disastrous mess – never seen anything like it in my life,” Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter told reporters at the scene two hours after the derailment.

NTSB investigators are examining the black box recorders at Amtrak's operations centre in nearby Wilmington, Delaware, he said.

Amtrak said there were 238 passengers and five crew on board the train, although Mr Nutter cautioned that the company was still comparing names on the train manifest with hospital records.

The accident occurred at one of the busiest junctions on the northeast corridor, where a number of freight and passenger rail routes merge, forcing trains to reduce speeds in the area.