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NTSB confirms train was going faster than 100mph prior to the derailment. https://twitter.com/NTSB/status/598566397241913346 "Prior to" could still mean at any time before, though. But I doubt they'd release the info if they didn't mean "just" prior.

Most NTSB interviews are done without lawyers present. Just throwing that out there.

Position of the wreckage makes it look to me like it just had too much speed going around the curve. Locomotive just kept going off the track, first car hit something, following cars derailed and rolled until the train stopped. Hope that first car was empty. Usually that's biz class and at this...

I think it would be hard to see a lot of things in LA without renting a car, but you certainly *could* do it. You'd just be limited to moving between your hotel and certain tourist areas, and various things might take a long time to get to and require a bus transfer or two, or an expensive taxi...

Yeah but he wants to do the Breaking Bad tour, which I can't argue with. My wife and I kind of wished we had more time in ABQ when we stopped there on the SWC for that reason too. We made sure we at least got a pic of the station sign. 1 day is about right to visit all the major featured places...

Even if that were true (and I don't believe it is), how would they have time to get there? And at what point are they supposed to give up on preventing the collision and relinquish all control of the engine? (That question is somewhat rhetorical - at the very least, they've gotta keep blowing...

The issue is, if somebody does get hit, the police *have to* issue a ticket to whoever was breaking the law. That's how the court assigns culpability and any liability is assessed. You see it all the time in New York. Car gets into a grade crossing accident and is totally destroyed... and the...

There had to be something going on in that train, like a coach with no heat or a bunch of overbooked passengers or something. I have been in plenty of SSL's, multiple times each on the SFZ, then CZ, EB, and SWC, all the way from Chicago to the west coast - I love to ride them at night and I have...

You may be right - it's been a while since I rode a Viewliner and we may have had the lounge and dining car flipped on our train or something like that, so I'm remembering it as if the bathroom was in the same car. The floor plans I've found have a little "box" with doors on one end of the car...

It's definitely illegal to cross if the crossing is working properly and only the lights are on - at a lot of crossings, the lights come on a few seconds before the gates come down just to give drivers already on the tracks time to clear. If you were to *enter* the tracks at this point, you not...

For me this is complicated if we're limiting it to roomettes. I normally travel with my wife and we both dislike the in-room toilet of the Viewliner I's. She's a nurse and I've watched Mythbusters enough times so we both know that it's impossible to use a toilet without spreading germs all over...

When my wife and I checked in to our room on the SWC a few weeks ago, we noticed there were four plastic straws (still in their wrappers) that were obviously old enough to have discolored still stuck in the door. They had fallen almost all the way to the bottom on their own, though. When I...

Old thread but as long as it's been brought back, I'll post mine. My worst accident was not on an Amtrak train, but an excursion train when I was a kid, using old heavyweight equipment and a steam engine. Somehow a switch got flipped as my car was going over it and we ended up half on one track...

Why would you call 911 when the police are on the scene? It seems to me that the problem is the police not calling Amtrak.

I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at how well CurrentC does. I personally don't have a dog in this fight - I own a store and will support whatever customers want to pay with, but personally I want to just keep using my plastic cards. But as a retailer, I know that people care a...

I was a little unclear in my post. The double slumbercoach rooms are effectively the same as even a modern-day roomette in a Viewliner or Superliner. (If you look at a room diagram, the layout is exactly the same and I'll bet the overall dimensions are too, more or less.) Roomettes separately...

To be "fair" to GM, Saturn also failed because their cars were both way behind the times at that point, and they didn't offer anything unique. They didn't have their own niche like Jeep and Mini do. They were just kind of the 5th or 6th best choice among a couple of car segments that were...

That is not the engine in my Mini. The engine in my Mini is a B38, assembled in England from German parts. (btw, my sticker lists the parts content from each country, as is required in the US.) By "driven into the ground" you mean what, exactly? Presumably all six of the Hondas you drove died...

The slumbercoach discussion comes up every once in a while. I agree it'd be great to have that option again, but it still can't really take the place of coach. Slumbercoaches were compartments for a single person, so if you're traveling with someone else, you'd still have to spring for a...

On the SWC a week or two ago, that's exactly what the side salad looked like. No carrots or anything, so maybe that hasn't quite rolled out everywhere yet. We did have to ask for our (first) salads. My wife and I met a guy in the lounge car who was traveling all the way from NY to LA in coach...