Children’s Outing Marred as Train Stalls in Tunnel

A field trip was interrupted in scary fashion for 97 fifth-graders from Florida when their homebound train stalled in a tunnel near Washington’s Union Station depot for nearly 40 minutes Thursday night and began filling with diesel fumes.

The pupils, from Longleaf Elementary School in Pensacola, were taken along with their adult chaperones to hospitals throughout the city for treatment of smoke inhalation. Authorities said about 25 children received first aid at Union Station and that only a few were seriously injured by the fumes.

According to a tally released Thursday night by Amtrak, a total of 129 persons from the train were taken to area hospitals.

The train stopped in the tunnel when a passenger in the train’s first car apparently activated an emergency brake. Amtrak officials said one of the train’s engines continued to run, spewing engine exhaust into the tunnel.

Ambulances Arrive

Scores of police and rescue workers converged on the station, and ambulances and buses crisscrossed the city for much of the evening, leaving as many children at each hospital as could be treated.

While some of the children appeared to regard the incident as something of an adventure, others cried or clung fearfully to chaperones.

“We had just gotten started when the train stopped in the tunnel,” one of the fifth-graders, Jason Ring, 11, said later.