102 Injured in Amtrak Derailment in New York

Amtrak’s westbound Lake Shore Limited derailed at high speed near here early Wednesday morning, injuring 102 passengers and crew members, after wheels on a mail car climbed over the rail and bounced along for three miles before hitting a switch and sending the train down an embankment.

Most of the injuries were minor, although six passengers were admitted to hospitals. The Lake Shore Limited originated separately in New York and Boston, and the two sections were combined into a 16-car train in Albany, N.Y., for the trip west to Chicago.

Many of the passengers were sleeping before the 3:45 a.m. wreck, when 13 of the 16 cars left the rails and some turned over. Only the two locomotives stayed on the track.

“It got very surreal for a minute,” passenger Jim Lamb told the Buffalo News. “The train started to wiggle, and then it tipped over. It was all very calm. There was no screaming or exclamations.”

Among the passengers were 22 Boy Scouts from Southwick, Mass., all of whom escaped serious injury.

The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a team of investigators to the scene, but although the team and railroad investigators quickly determined what happened, they did not yet know why.

Safety board member John Lauber said investigators had found gouges in the rail for about three miles before the wreck scene.

Other sources close to the investigation said it appeared that wheels on one axle of the first car on the train, the mail car, slowly climbed on top of the rail as the train rounded a slight curve, then dropped to the road bed. At a road crossing some distance later, the other set of wheels on the same end of the car left the rail. Then at a point where a set of switches allows trains to change tracks, the wreck occurred.

Crew members on a freight train sitting on the other track waiting to cross over behind the passenger train noticed sparks flying from underneath the car and radioed the passenger train engineer, but it was too late. Preliminary indications are that the train was traveling 74-76 m.p.h., below the posted speed for the area.