Following the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) Oct. 12 derailment, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued a safety alert calling on rail transit agencies and commuter railroads to check their fleets for “wheelsets that do not meet gage specifications”; NTSB also released a preliminary report on the derailment.
Amtrak will resume Cascades service on the Point Defiance Bypass between Seattle, Wash., and Portland, Ore., on Nov. 18, nearly four years after an overspeed derailment stopped service there.
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has issued a Safety Advisory requiring State Safety Oversight Agencies (SSOA) to report “out-of-tolerance wheel gauges” on all rail transit rolling stock in revenue service, and recommending fleet-wide inspections of wheel gauges at public transportation systems in their jurisdictions.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released a preliminary report on its investigation into the Sept. 25 derailment of Amtrak’s Empire Builder train 7/27 near Joplin, Mont.
As part of the investigation into the Oct. 12 derailment on Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Blue Line, all 748 7000-series rapid transit cars were sidelined on Oct. 18.
We, the railroads, have established certain principles of safe train operations that we wish were absolute, positive, inviolable. We apply one such principle in the enforcement of train separation: the principle that
Amtrak’s Empire Builder train 7/27 traveling westbound from Chicago to Seattle/Portland on Sept. 25 derailed near Joplin, Mont., at 3:55 p.m. MT. The passenger train was traveling between 75-78 mph, below the 79 mph speed limit, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported on Sept. 27 during its first media briefing.
President Joe Biden on May 19 nominated Homendy. She testified in a June 24 confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The full Senate on Aug. 9.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt retired from government service On June 30, 2021, following nearly 15 years at the NTSB. His tenure as the agency’s 14th chairman began in August 2017. Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg will serve as Acting Chairman until a new chair is confirmed by the Senate. President Biden nominated NTSB Member Jennifer Homendy May 20 to become the NTSB’s 15th chair.
There are many things that can’t be hurried in this life, and probably shouldn’t be, like wine and bread (let beaujolais nouveau and matzoh be a warning to us all). There are other things that could use a bit of hurrying, like medical fitness for duty standards and the National Transportation Safety Board, but those two have proven themselves so resistant to urgings, proddings, cris du coeur, that they’ve almost worn me down. Almost.
