No One Hurt as Amtrak Train Carrying More than 300 Derails in Snowy Georgia
Three cars slid off tracks but no injuries reported in incident that occurred as train was backing into station.
An Amtrak passenger train with more than 300 people aboard went off the tracks in wintry conditions near a station in Savannah, Georgia. There were no reports of injuries.
The incident occurred at about 10:00 PM on Wednesday as "the Silver Meteor #98 traveling from Miami to New York had three cars derail while backing at a slow speed into the Savannah Station," according to Jason Abrams, a spokesperson for Amtrak.
"All three cars – a baggage car and two sleeper cars are fully upright," Abrams told The Drive. "There are approximately 311 passengers on board, and no reports of injuries to passengers and crew," he added.
The train continued north with some of the sleeping car passengers transferred to another train, Abrams added.
Asked whether an automatic braking system called Positive Train Control, or PTC, was in operation on the stretch of tracks where the train derailed in Georgia, Abrams pointed to a fact sheet stating Amtrak's support of the technology and detailing its efforts to install it.
Amtrak is not responsible for installing PTC in tracks it does not own or control, the sheet stressed.
Federal safety investigators have indicted in preliminary findings that PTC could have prevented the December derailment of an Amtrak train that killed three people in Washington, just south of Seattle.
Congress has mandated that PTC be implemented on most U.S. tracks by the end of next year, but the federal mandate has been postponed before.
