A northbound Amtrak Acela train traveling from Washington D.C. to Boston, MA came apart just north of Havre de Grace, Md. this morning, according to CBS News.
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The train, Amtrak train 2150, was reportedly traveling over 100 miles per hour on the high-speed Northeast Corridor when two cars of the semi-permanently coupled trainset came apart, according to the New York Post. The trains remained connected by an air hose. A photo shows the vestibule between the affected cars dangling in mid-air.
.@Amtrak Acela train from DC to NYC separates during morning commute in Maryland. https://t.co/kmzF0hJds0 Photo: David Gerard pic.twitter.com/4GbSj3EwBj
— Sam Sweeney (@SweeneyABC) February 6, 2018
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Amtrak spokesperson Jason Abrams said there were 52 passengers onboard the high-speed service. No injuries were reported to passengers or Amtrak crew, and Amtrak passengers boarded Northeast Regional train 180 to continue their trip to Philadelphia, New York, Boston and other points north.
The detachment — which Amtrak is calling a “mechanical failure” — took place around 6:40 a.m. EST. Abrams says Amtrak is inspecting every Acela trainset out of an abundance of caution and taking “precautionary measures” as needed.
A former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) told CBS News that the derailment was “very unusual.” Mark Rosenker told the network he’d “never heard of anything like that happening to that train.”
Both the NTSB and the Federal Railroad Administration are investigating the incident. The trainset has been moved to an Amtrak facility in Bear, DE. Amtrak plans to debut new Acela trainsets beginning in 2021 made by French manufacturer Alstom.
The incident is the latest in a series of accidents involving Amtrak trains, including two in just the past week.
An Amtrak train struck a stationary freight train in South Carolina on Sunday, killing two crew members and injuring over 100 people. On Wednesday of last week, a chartered train taking Republican lawmakers to the Greenbriar resort in West Virginia hit a garbage truck on the tracks in Crozet, Virginia, killing one man in the truck and injuring several others.
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