PHILADELPHIA — Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains will resume service Monday in “complete compliance” with federal safety orders after last week’s deadly derailment, officials announced Sunday.
Company president Joseph Boardman said Amtrak staff and crew have been working “around the clock” to restore service along the route between Washington and Boston after Tuesday night’s crash that killed eight people and injured more than 200 others.
Federal regulators on Saturday ordered Amtrak to expand use of a speed-control system long in effect for southbound trains near the crash site to northbound trains in the same area. The agency also ordered the company to examine all curves along the Northeast Corridor and determine whether more can be done to improve safety.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board have focused on the acceleration of the train as it approached a curve, reaching 106 mph as it entered the 50-mph stretch and managing to slow down slightly before the crash.
“The only way that an operable train can accelerate would be if the engineer pushed the throttle forward. And … the event recorder does record throttle movement. We will be looking at that to see if that corresponds to the increase in the speed of the train,” board member Robert Sumwalt said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The Amtrak engineer has told authorities that he does not recall anything in the few minutes before the crash.
Investigators have been looking into reports that the windshield of the train might have been struck by some sort of object, but Sumwalt said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program on Sunday that he wanted to “downplay” the idea that damage to the windshield might have come from someone firing a shot at the train.
“I’ve seen the fracture pattern; it looks like something about the size of a grapefruit, if you will, and it did not even penetrate the entire windshield,” Sumwalt said.
