KENSINGTON, Md. — According to a wire service, less than a minute before an Amtrak train derailed outside Washington this week, the engineer spotted an area of track that was misaligned, a crash investigator said.
The crash injured 101 people and dealt another blow to Amtrak as it attempts to emerge from the worst budget crisis in its 31-year history.
The misaligned track was being given close attention by investigators, but Carol Carmody, vice chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, would not say whether it caused the derailment.
Investigators are looking into whether temperatures in the 90s caused the steel rails to expand and warp out of alignment.
The engineer told investigators he spotted the misshapen area 45 seconds before the train derailed and applied the brakes. Investigators found the track was as much as 30 inches out of alignment, Carmody said.
Some misalignment “was existing before the derailment, let’s put it that way,” Carmody said.
The train was traveling from Chicago to Washington on Monday when it went off the tracks. Sixteen people remained hospitalized, including one in serious condition.
A reading taken before the accident showed the temperature of the rail was 118 degrees, Carmody said. She did not say whether that was unusual.
Freight trains began running again Wednesday morning on the tracks where the derailment occurred. State commuter rail service was expected to resume later in the day. Amtrak did not announce when its service will resume.
Before the accident, crews tamped the area last Thursday to ensure the rails had enough clearance from the rail bed. The crew used a mechanical tamper at first and finished the job by hand after the mechanism broke down, Carmody said.
Tamping is a process where crews use a machine to grab onto track to lift it 1 inches above gravel that forms the rail bed, while compressing the gravel itself to make it more stable.
The derailment occurred where all tamping stopped, Carmody said. She refused to speculate whether that was a factor.
Before Carmody’s briefing, Rep. Jack Quinn ( news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., chairman of the House transportation subcommittee on railroads, said initial reports show “the extreme temperatures in the Washington, D.C., area may have caused a heat kink in the track, forcing the train to derail.”
Freight carrier CSX Transportation, which owns and operates the tracks, said it was ordering Amtrak and other passenger carriers that use its lines to slow down and follow other rules imposed on its freight trains on days when heat threatens to warp rails.
Passenger trains are shorter and lighter than freight trains. The pressure a freight train can put on rail can actually raise its temperature but a passenger train is generally too light for that.
CSX said the change would continue at least until the end of the summer, when temperatures rise to 90 degrees on consecutive days or fluctuate by 40 degrees two days in a row. Heat orders are in effect between 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.
“We have a duty to protect the people that ride on passenger trains on our rail lines,” said Alan F. Crown, executive vice president-transportation for CSX. “Until we know more facts about the recent derailment and are able to determine if there is a better solution, we’re taking the most conservative course.”
The speed limit on the stretch of track where the accident happened normally is 70 mph for passenger trains and 55 mph for freight trains, CSX said. A heat order issued by CSX on Monday required freight trains, but not passenger trains, to travel 10 mph below the posted speed limit.
Under the new policy, passenger trains will not be allowed to travel faster than freight trains when heat orders are in effect. For example, the Amtrak train would have been limited to 45 mph on Monday if the new rules had been in effect.
Amtrak spokesman Bill Epstein declined to comment about the specifics of the new policy, saying officials there hadn’t seen it yet.
“When we run on a host rail line, we have to follow their rules and regulations. That’s a general rule,” Epstein said.