Cause of deadly Amtrak derailment in Montana Remains Unclear

JOPLIN, Mont. – Officials have not yet released information on what they suspect caused an Amtrak train to derail in north-central Montana, killing three people. Seven remained hospitalized Sunday as a team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the site.

The train carrying 145 passengers and 13 crew members was en route from Chicago to Seattle when it left the tracks about 4 p.m. Saturday near Joplin, a town of about 200.

One of the three people killed in the crash has been identified as Zach Schneider of Fairview Heights, Ill., just over the border from St. Louis. Family members say Schneider was a big Green Bay Packers fan and loved a good slice of Chicago-style pizza.

The other two victims had not been identified as of Monday morning.

Officials from the NTSB, Amtrak and BNSF arrived at the accident scene over the weekend where several rail cars could still be seen on their sides. Several large cranes were brought to the tracks that run roughly parallel to U.S. Highway 2, along with a truckload of gravel and new railroad ties.

Emergency crews struggled without success to cut open cars with special tools, “so they did have to manually carry out many of the passengers that could not walk,” the Associated Press reports. 

Railroad safety expert David Clarke said accident scene photos show the derailment occurred at or near a switch, which is where the railway goes from a single track to a double track. Clarke said the two locomotives and two cars at the front of the train reached the split and continued on the main track, but the remaining eight cars derailed. He said it was unclear if some of the last cars moved onto the second track.

According to the New York Times, derailments are most often caused by speeding around a turn, as was the case in fatal Amtrak crashes in Washington and Philadelphia in recent years. Since those crashes, Amtrak has installed a braking system that prevents trains from exceeding certain speeds and that applies brakes to avoid collisions with other trains or railroad equipment. But in this case, the human factors that might cause an accident like this don’t appear to be present.

“More than likely, something broke,” Allan Zarembski, director of the Railroad Engineering and Safety Program at the University of Delaware said.

Excluding human error, most wrecks are caused by faulty equipment — maybe a wheel or an axle, or the track itself.

Some passengers reported that the train ride felt bumpy for many miles, which might signal a problem with the train’s suspension system.

If the turbulence was more sudden, Saturday’s heat could also be to blame, said Russell Quimby, a retired accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board noted.

Quimby said he suspects the train may have hit a section of the track that had buckled from overheating. Around the time of the accident, the temperature in Joplin peaked at 84 degrees. Railroad tracks are usually about 20 to 30 degrees hotter than the outside temperature, which could be well above what the tracks were designed to withstand.

In 1988, an Amtrak train traveling the same route derailed in Saco, Mont., after hitting a track buckle.