BALTIMORE — An Amtrak train was going more than twice as fast as it should have been when it derailed last month because a speed restriction had been prematurely lifted, a federal report said.
According to a wire service, more than 100 people were injured when the train traveling from Chicago to Washington jumped the track and fell on its side in Kensington on July 29.
National Transportation Safety Board officials said they haven’t made any conclusions about what caused the accident.
“It’s much to early to determine if this is a factor,” said NTSB spokeswoman Lauren Peduzzi. “We’re also looking at others — traffic, temperatures and a whole range of factors.”
CSX Corp. crews had worked on the section of the company-owned track on July 22. They planned to complete the work later, and a 25 mph speed limit was placed on the track section until the job could be finished.
But weather and delays kept the work from being completed, and a track supervisor who thought the work was done raised the speed limit to 60 mph on July 28, according to CSX spokesman Gary Sease. The Amtrak train was traveling 60 mph when it derailed.
“It was a procedural error. The slow order should not have been lifted,” Sease said.
The crews working on the track were carrying out a process called tamping, in which a machine lifts the track 1 1/2 inches above gravel that forms the rail bed.
CSX uses two types of tampers — a mechanical tamper and a hand-operated hydraulic tamper similar to a jackhammer. The crew had used a hand-operated tamper, but the rail company requires all tamping to be completed by mechanical tamper before speed restrictions are lifted, Sease said.
The NTSB report says the work separated the bond between the wooden rail ties and the gravel bedding they sit on. It was unclear whether the bond was separated at the time of the accident.
Investigators have also said excessive heat may have caused the track to buckle before the accident. The temperature was well above 90 degrees at the time of the crash and the engineer said he saw a misshapen area of track 400 feet ahead of the train before he applied the brakes.
After the crash, CSX enforced new speed restrictions for passenger trains using its tracks on days when the temperature tops 90 degrees. Washington-area commuter rail lines have blamed the new restrictions for frequent delays.