Politico Morning Transportation: Another deadly Amtrak crash

February 5, 2018
By LAUREN GARDNER, With help from Brianna Gurciullo and Daniel Lippman, Politico; February 5, 2018

AMTRAK-CSX CRASH KILLS TWO: An Amtrak train crashed into the tail-end of a parked CSX freight train on a siding in South Carolina early Sunday morning, killing two Amtrak employees in the lead locomotive and raising questions about why a switch was enabled to move trains off to a siding. NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said Sunday afternoon that the switch was “lined and locked” for trains “to be diverted into the siding. Of course, key to this investigation is learning why that switch was lined that way, because the expectation of course is that the Amtrak [train] would be cleared and would be operating straight down” the tracks.

CSX in control: An administration official told POLITICO the investigation is also focusing on the communications between CSX dispatch and the Amtrak train before the crash. Amtrak President and CEO Richard Anderson repeatedly told reporters Sunday that CSX is responsible for the section of track where the collision occurred. “They are in complete control of the track: the signaling, the switching and, in fact, our train engineers and conductors — as we move over their railroad — are directed and in regular contact with the dispatch center at CSX, so the signals and particularly the switches are controlled by CSX,” Anderson said.

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