Pretty impressive, to have a locomotive wind up on top of a frieght car... fortunately, most of the injured were walking wounded. Lots of face-into-seatback injuries. The worst injuries were to the train crew up front in the engine, some critical, although there were no deaths (and hopefully will not be any). Some of the damage seen in the first photo is a result of emergency workers having to cut the train crew in the front cab out of the wreck.
The train was not moving at high speed, probably no more than 25 mph/40 kph. There is an "event recorder" which records information on train speed and other parameters which has already been turned over the NTSB for analysis, along with a videotape from an Amtrak owned camera that apparently captured the whole accident.
As it happens, I rode a train into downtown Chicago yesterday to pick up my severance pay, but it was a different train on a completely different track. I've been in a train accident myself, people and luggage really do go flying all over since no one has a seat belt and nothing is tied down.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- A passenger train and a freight train collided on Friday in the south side of Chicago, in the U.S. Midwestern state of Illinois, injuring dozens of people, media reports said.
Seventy-one people were sent to hospitals for treatment. Five Amtrak workers were in critical or serious condition, but the rest of those injured were in stable condition, Chicago Fire Department officials said.
An Amtrak passenger train carrying 187 passengers was en route from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Chicago, when it collided with a Norfolk Southern freight train which was traveling from Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Chicago.
The passenger train bumped into the tail end of the freight train when the former was approaching the station, news reports said, quoting witnesses.
The passengers were quickly evacuated after the accident. No one on the freight train was injured.
The cause of the accident was not immediately known, and the National Transportation Safety Board has sent investigators to the scene.
Though I've not seen many pictures of train wrecks like this, I can't recall seeing any where the engine of one train actually climbed on top of the other train and did so without rolling over, let alone leaving the line of travel of the rails! I wonder if any of the cars derailed?
Well, the engine derailed in that it's no longer on the tracks but on top of another train, but no, no other cars in either train derailed according to the news reports.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
This is speculation, but I suspect that Norfolk Southern, famous for utterly despising Amtrak's operations on their track, were cutting corners in trying to get that freight through ahead of the Pierre Marquette instead of having dispatched it to a siding to allow the passenger train to pass (as they should have).
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
First of all, the freight train had been stopped, awaiting a signal to move, which supposedly it received just prior to the crash.
And second, some types of freight have priority over passenger trains, as well as the fact that merely because a train has passengers does not automatically give it priority over even non-priority freight.
And third, even if one party despises another, it's HIGHLY unlikely anyone would do something to deliberately cause a collision.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
First of all, the freight train had been stopped, awaiting a signal to move, which supposedly it received just prior to the crash.
And second, some types of freight have priority over passenger trains, as well as the fact that merely because a train has passengers does not automatically give it priority over even non-priority freight.
And third, even if one party despises another, it's HIGHLY unlikely anyone would do something to deliberately cause a collision.
Well, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that corners were cut, not intentionally but as part of an effort to squeeze as much capacity out of the line as possible, in part because of the "nuisance" of running Amtrak trains down it, of which several more daily runs in that direction head on to Port Huron and Detroit/Pontiac respectively.
Anyway, under federal law the passenger trains have priority (and it would be easy enough to institute that). But it's never been enforced, unfortunately, one of the reasons why Norfolk Southern will have an Amtrak train sit on the siding until it's three hours later as endless lines of coal drags roll past at 35mph.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
None of the trains on those lines move fast, and this sort of collision is exactly the reason why (well, that and tracks over a century old in some spots).
I don't think it is a proven case of "cutting corners" - plain old human error and electronic malfunction are just as liking. I'd prefer to wait until the NTSB has at it. There's a hell of a lot of rail traffic through that area every day, an occasional accident is inevitable at some point because nothing works perfectly all the time.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Broomstick wrote:Well, the engine derailed in that it's no longer on the tracks but on top of another train, but no, no other cars in either train derailed according to the news reports.
Of course, I should have been more clear. The engine clearly left the tracks.
Today I saw a bit of video from above and it didn't look like any of the other cars jumped the tracks.
I guess the relatively slow speed played a part in this.
Makes me glad I take Chicago Metra when I head down in that direction. It's lines are devoted wholly to passenger trains and *only* run Metra trains, thus reducing the chance of fuckups like this.
Gaian Paradigm: Because not all fantasy has to be childish crap. Ephemeral Pie: Because not all role-playing has to be shallow. My art: Because not all DA users are talentless emo twits. "Phant, quit abusing the He-Wench before he turns you into a caged bitch at a Ren Fair and lets the tourists toss half munched turkey legs at your backside." -Mr. Coffee
I'm glad no-one died from the crash but on a lighter note, when I saw the picture of the crash what I first thought was "TRAIN SEX!".
ASVS('97)/SDN('03)
"Whilst human alchemists refer to the combustion triangle, some of their orcish counterparts see it as more of a hexagon: heat, fuel, air, laughter, screaming, fun." Dawn of the Dragons
The train I take home every day has run over Conrail trackage for a few miles, and some nights we'll just sit for 45 minutes as container trains slog by us, coming out of port out Elizabeth. One summer night, we were stuck waiting next to a garbage train. Luckily, the engineer had the sense to shut off the climate controls, so the stench wouldn't get into the cars. Unfortunately, that meant it was getting hot, and in a hurry.
But that's what you get for riding on the red-headed stepchild of NJ Transit.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, III vi.
