Train derails in US, spilling vegetable oil, closing major highway

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES—A Union Pacific freight train derailed in Nevada, US on Wednesday, spilling vegetable oil and prompting the closure of an interstate highway.

The vegetable oil spilled out of 1 of the 22 derailed cars after the train went off the tracks shortly before 11 a.m. local time, the Elko County Sheriff's Office said on Facebook, citing Union Pacific Railroad officials.

"We had some vegetable oil and some diesel spill. There was nothing hazardous that was released or in the derailed cars," Union Pacific spokeswoman Kristen South said.

South said ammunition was being carried on the train but was not in the cars that derailed. She said there were no injuries in the derailment and that the cause was under investigation.

The derailment near Wells, Nevada, about 180 miles (290 km) west of Salt Lake City, Utah, prompted authorities to shut down Interstate-80 in both directions, the Nevada Department of Transportation said on Twitter.

A photo of the scene showed smoke rising from a jumble of rail cars.

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Amtrak safety record under scrutiny before fatal derailment

The deadly derailment of an Amtrak train south of Seattle is likely to intensify scrutiny of the national passenger railroad company's safety record, which was already under the microscope following a series of fatal incidents.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said late on Monday the train was traveling at 80 miles (130 km) per hour in a 30-mph (48 kph) zone when it jumped the tracks that morning.

The NTSB said it was too soon to say whether excessive speed contributed to the crash, which killed at least three people. Another 100 were taken to hospitals, 10 with serious injuries, officials said.

Amtrak's co-chief executive, Richard Anderson, told reporters earlier on Monday he would not speculate on the cause of the derailment and said safety was the company's top priority.

However, Anderson acknowledged that a working Positive Train Control (PTC), a system that automatically slows trains if they are going too fast, had not been installed on that stretch of track. PTC also prevents train-on-train collisions and stops a train from passing through misaligned tracks.

Moreover, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt just last month issued a scathing critique of Amtrak's culture, saying a future breakdown was likely.

"Amtrak's safety culture is failing and is primed to fail again, until and unless Amtrak changes the way it practices safety management," Sumwalt said on Nov. 14.

Congress had mandated the implementation of PTC nationwide by the end of 2015, then extended that deadline until the end of 2018 after finding installation was harder than anticipated.

"Every year we wait in implementing PTC to its full extent, more people are going to be killed," Bella Dinh-Zarr, an NTSB member helping oversee the derailment investigation, told CNN on Tuesday.

In 2015, the NTSB calculated PTC would have prevented 145 train accidents, saved 300 lives and avoided 6,700 injuries had it been in place since 1969.

Investigators have said speeding was to blame, at least in part, for a number of recent crashes, including one in 2015 in Philadelphia that killed eight people.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said on Tuesday that PTC was "needed now."

"Why was Amtrak train traveling at nearly TRIPLE the speed limit before fatal derailment?" Blumenthal asked in a Twitter post. "Positive Train Control might have prevented this disaster and saved lives."

Less than half Amtrak's 459 locomotives had PTC as of the second quarter of 2017, the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

Two-thirds of Amtrak's track segments and route miles had PTC in operation.

In Germany, Britain and France there has been some form of automatic train control since the 1930s, the FRA said. Japan has run its bullet trains since 1964 with zero passenger fatalities.

Amtrak did not respond to a Reuters query on whether the locomotive in Monday's crash had PTC. But even if it did, the tracks at the accident site, owned by the Transit Sound commuter rail, did not. To be effective, PTC must be operating both in the engine and on the tracks, with radio towers installed and staff trained in its use.

Keith Millhouse, a former chairman of the board of directors for Southern California's Metrolink commuter rail system, said the NTSB's previous criticism suggested Amtrak might be "distracted" from its safety mission.

He also questioned why Amtrak had yet to install PTC nationwide. Even though it has another year to complete the measures, the project was mandated by the U.S. Congress nine years ago.

"Amtrak is supposed to be the national rail," Millhouse said. "Why aren't they taking the lead?"

Other railroad advocates are more forgiving, pointing to the difficulties of installing new technology on largely 20th-century infrastructure, as well as chronic underfunding.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Monday the accident showed why his soon-to-be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly.

Earlier this year the Trump administration proposed ending subsidies for Amtrak to operate long-distance train service, cutting $630 million of the $1.4 billion in annual government support for passenger rail service. Those cuts were rejected by Congress.

"There is a money issue because while Congress mandated the implementation of PTC on the railroads, they didn't give any money for it, so it is self-funded," said Allan Zarembski, director of the Railroad Engineering and Safety Program at the University of Delaware. He added the caveat that U.S. funding for Amtrak covers its capital programs.

"For commuter agencies, it falls on the local governments to fund them," he said.

Sound Transit spokesman Geoff Patrick said PTC equipment had been installed where the crash happened, but that the system was not yet operational or certified for use. Full implementation on that segment was expected by the second quarter of 2018, he said.

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New York train crash injures more than 100 commuters

NEW YORK - A New York City train derailed at a downtown Brooklyn terminal during Wednesday's morning rush hour, injuring more than 100 commuters in the metropolitan area's second major rail accident since late September.

Emergency crews swarmed Atlantic Terminal after the Long Island Rail Road train went off the tracks inside the busy transportation hub at 8:20 a.m. local time, the New York City Fire Department said.

While none of the injuries were life-threatening, at least 11 people were sent to the hospital, Deputy Assistant Chief Dan Donoghue said at a briefing at the crash site. Between 600 and 700 people were on the train, he said.

The train, arriving from the Queens neighborhood of Far Rockaway, failed to stop on time. Traveling at a fairly slow speed, it derailed after striking a bumping block, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said at the briefing.

About 103 people were injured, the fire department said in a Twitter message. The front two cars of the six-carriage train were severely damaged. The station's partitions and bumping block, which prevents railway vehicles from going past the end of a section of track, were also damaged.

Passengers said the blood and chaos following the derailment was frightening.

"There were people crying," said Aaron Neufeld, a 26-year-old paralegal who commutes on the rail line daily. "I saw some bloody faces."

Neufeld, who was riding in the second car, said the train appeared to be approaching normally until it crashed, knocking passengers on top of one another and shattering glass windows.

"Bags went flying," he said. "People were thrown to the ground."

The engineer was probably responsible for failing to stop the train before it hit the bumper, said Tom Prendergast, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the agency that runs the railroad.

The train was traveling between 10 and 15 miles per hour as it approached the bumper, he said, which is standard.

"At that speed, it's pretty much the locomotive engineer's responsibility to stop the train," Prendergast said as he stood beside Cuomo at the briefing. Investigators will interview the engineer, the conductor and brakeman to determine the cause of the accident, he said.

There were no major service disruptions for other Long Island Rail Road lines at the terminal, an MTA official said. Earlier, officials said crews were working to restore service at the terminal by the evening rush hour.

In late September, a New Jersey Transit train crashed into a terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey, killing one woman and injuring 114 people, including the engineer.

Cuomo, who has made infrastructure improvements a centerpiece of his agenda, said Wednesday's incident was minor in comparison. The most serious injury in the crash was a broken leg, he said.

"There was extensive damage in Hoboken," Cuomo said. "That train was coming in much faster, did much more damage."

The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said they were sending investigators to the scene.

The Long Island Rail Road is the United State's largest commuter rail system, serving more than 330,000 passengers a day, according to the American Public Transportation Association.

Atlantic Terminal, which also connects commuters to nine city subway lines, is one of the busiest New York stations. (Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, David Shepardson and David Ingram; Writing by Laila Kearney; Editing by Frank McGurty and Lisa Von Ahn)

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