MENDON, Mo. — Three people are dead after Amtrak’s Southwest Chief hit a dump truck and derailed Monday afternoon, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
NBC News reports two people from the train and one person in the truck were killed, according to Highway Patrol Corporal Justin Dunn. A significant number of others were injured. Dunn said he did not have a number, but noted several people were taken to area hospitals. CNN is reporting at least 50 people are injured. Medical helicopters and ambulance services from several counties responded.
The accident occurred about 12:45 p.m., and involved the eastbound Chief, which was carrying 243 passengers and 12 crew members. Both locomotives and seven of the eight cars derailed in the accident at what Dunn described as “an uncontrolled crossing,” meaning one without lights or crossing gates. Photographs show cars on their sides with people escaping by climbing through the side windows.
Mendon, population 160, is about 85 miles northeast of Kansas City and 12 miles southwest of Marceline, Mo.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a Twitter post that it would send a 14-member investigative team to the site, with that group expected to arrive on Tuesday.
Amtrak has activated a phone line for friends and family members to check on those board the train. That number is 1-800-523-9101. The passenger railroad has also sent emergency workers to provide support for passengers and crew members.
— Updated at 6:15 p.m. CDT with latest information. This is a developing story. Watch Trains News Wire for additional updates.
Why should the RR’s be responsible for signage/signals at road crossings those tracks were more than likely there long before the road was they are traversing the RR’s private property. Perhaps this would be a good use for all the Federal Infrastructure $$ being thrown at roads & hwys instead of wasting it on more urban/suburban roads & unnecessary freeway expansions.
I live almost 1000 miles from the accident. TV coverage NBC, ABC, & CNN talked about the accident as if the train just derailed. ONLY in the final 2 seconds of any news clip did it mention that a truck was involved in the accident. Another Sad case of reporters rushing to get a news story but NOT Properly reporting the facts.
Yep. Just another chapter in the reporting the lamestream media does when it comes to a railroad incident. I guess we should be thankful they mentioned the truck being on the tracks at all.
If the money spent/wasted on PTC had been devoted the grade crossing signals/elimination how many more lives would have been saved. My guess is at least 100 to 1.
Not sure about this, but would it not be the towns responsibility to provide signage or crossing protection on these roads. I would think that the railroad was there first therefore should you build a road across it is it not your responsibility to provide protection. I am sure someone out there could tell me if I am right or wrong on this issue.
Depends on who owns the roadway. Some roads are state-owned. Others could be county, or other local government. And, there are also privately-owned roads crossing railroads.
Some locations put up a stop sign. Much cheaper that $100,000 cost for some signalized crossings. This should put all liability issues on the driver who disobeys the traffic device.
You will always have stupid people who will disobey any type of device that is used.
I’d be very interested in what the professional railroaders have to say about my thoughts. Am I out of line? Too extreme?
Years ago, I had an employee who had to retire early because of the nightmares from his railroad career. His train hit a station wagon because the driver tried going around the gates. In another case, back when I was married, we used to regularly pass the the crossing in Catlett, VA, when the “Southern Crescent” hit a volunteer fire truck on an emergency run at an unguarded crossing. That left a long-term memory on the community because some of the volunteers were teenagers.
The grade crossing carnage has to stop for innocent Amtrak and other rail passengers. This just should not be happening.
Something more substantial than a flexible plastic gate , or nothing at all, needs to be provided at rail crossings where passengers trains routinely travel at a speed where collision avoidance becomes not possible. That speed I’d think the RRs know or can figure out.
Something like a vehicle barrier system linked below needs to be raised a minute before how long it’ll take a train to stop at any crossing. For example, if a train takes five minutes to stop, raise the barrier six minutes before. It’ll stop any stupid people from trying to beat a train. Too bad about the wait, the train was there long before you. If public safety first responder is an issue of a community, I certainly understand; but then let the community build a tunnel or bridge to address the concern, the train was there long before you.
Railroad’s: Provide sensors at crossings to detect vehicles stuck across track at a grade crossing outside of that window, visual and magnetic, giving train crews adequate warning before visual. There should not be any such vehicle stuck inside that time window, see above. This to me makes sense for the railroads to address.
This is more to protect the innocent passengers and crew rather than the stupid people.
I’m not a railroader but am an engineer (not of the train type 😬). This seems pretty basic to me. Who pays? Well, it’s not the railroads who have the stupid people.
https://deltascientific.com/high-security/wedge-barricades/
Sent from my iPhone
The crossing protection you are advocating would cost billions to cover the U.S. Illinois has a few crossings like that on Amtrak’s Chicago-St. Louis line at great cost and just a drop in the bucket
This was an unfortunate collision at a rural unprotected crossing. We must have hundreds of thousands of them in the U.S.
Photos on CNN show numerous cars on their sides. Whether all the cars rolled onto their sides is unknown.
According to Amtrak’s webpage, No. 3 scheduled to depart from Chicago on June 27th was cancelled. I wonder why No. 3 was cancelled.
Could be a few things. Future crew/equipment availability. Maybe BNSF requested the train not run. Timeline for track to be reopened.
This is so sad to hear. But one thing that comes to mind is the crossing protection at the rural public crossing this happened at. I have heard that this section of track is 90mph MAS. I am surprised that on rail lines that operate passenger trains at that speed, unprotected (without warning lights or gates) crossings are still allowed. I realize the FRA conducts studies based on number of vehicles using the crossing and previous history to determine risk, but seriously, who would ever think that this is a safe crossing for trains going 90mph? This reminds me of the incidents in South Carolina over the years that involved logging trucks hitting Amtrak trains at similar unprotected crossings. Thankfully those incidents didn’t result in what we see today. I wonder if the cars being bi-levels increase the risk of rotating onto their sides, like the Montana incident last year?
Being bi-levels has nothing to do with increased rotation to the side…that would be a result of the impact with the dump truck(whose driver is either dead or permanently disabled and has to live with the knowledge he caused this the rest of his life). If the consist didn’t separate then the tight-lock couplers did their job…though if some are on their sides then that is considered a failure. Part of the job of those couplers is to keep the cars from separating and from going on their sides(don’t ask me how they’re supposed to do that, they just are).
For clarity, the active warning at these crossings are “Traffic Control Warning Devices” intended for motorists, same as a traffic light at an intersection. These traffic control devices do not “protect” anything, they are there to warn the motoring public. While having a active warning device at this crossing, may have helped, it should be noted that almost 50% of collisions with trains at these crossing happen where active warning is in place. Having active warning at every crossing is not always feasible, especially if vehicle frequency is low. The states usually have oversite over all crossings and making these determination’s. From my experience, state traffic laws require motorists to yield the right of way to trains, for all the obvious reasons. Rather than speculate, I will wait the results of the investigation regarding any contributing factors regarding this incident.
MDR (FRA Retired)
This is directed to the IT folks who produce this web site. The time stamps on the tiles on the main newswire page need to be fixed to be based on more than just the day. The tile for this story indicates it was posted 16 hours ago when in reality the accident didn’t occur until just a few hours ago. This is very misleading and should be fixed. It should take very little change to post the exact time the story was posted/posted, and this seems to be something a serious news reposting site should be doing.
I agree. As I was reading this story, the story was also the lead news story on the radio. Otherwise having been away for a few days, I would have thought this had happened late Sunday afternoon.
I do agree, but hopefully we can be patient with Trains/Kalmbach staff which I am sure is not large. There were multiple issues with the launch of the expanded website– incuding the long delay in getting it launched after it was announced and the loss of ability to scroll from one news item to the next directly. I assume this is because they are working with a contractor to build their website, limited in house staff or software with limited capabilities.
Time stamps are based on server location unless otherwise changed by the user…you can figure out a general idea of the servers location that Trains uses based on the time stamps(everything starts with GMT).