Chicago – A commuter train was going almost 60 mph above the speed limit just before it derailed, killing two people and injuring dozens, the acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday.
Mark Rosenker said the Metra train was traveling at 69 mph and should not have been going faster than 10 mph when it switched tracks at a crossover just before jumping the tracks Saturday.
“Sixty-nine miles an hour is very, very fast when you’re dealing with a 10-mile-an-hour restriction,” Rosenker said.
The speed information came from a preliminary reading of one of the train’s three electronic data recorders, or black boxes, Rosenker said.
Part of the investigation included an interview Sunday with the train’s engineer, Rosenker said.
The 41-year-old man had been on the job for 45 days after completing Metra’s six-month program, which included at least some training along the route where the derailment occurred.
He also had worked for more than five years as a CSX Corp. freight-train engineer.
The NTSB also will examine records of the train signals and radio transmissions from a control tower, Rosenker said.
The double-decked commuter train was headed into Chicago from Joliet on Saturday morning with 185 passengers and four crew members when its locomotive and five rail cars jumped the tracks about 5 miles south of downtown.
The train began to derail as it switched tracks, striking a steel bridge just beyond the crossover. Rosenker said the collision damaged at least one rail car and likely contributed to at least one of the deaths.
The train and the track had been inspected Friday, said Judy Pardonnet, a spokeswoman for Metra, the commuter rail system that serves the Chicago area.
The train engineer, three crew members and dispatchers were tested for drugs and alcohol, which is standard procedure, Pardonnet said.
A similar derailment occurred on the same stretch of track in 2003, injuring about 45 people. A preliminary NTSB report found that the train was going almost 70 mph at the location where it was supposed to switch from one track to the other.
