NEW YORK (AP) – A report shows that a faulty track caused a recent train derailment at New York’s Penn Station in an area where Amtrak is performing repairs that are causing service cutbacks for hundreds of thousands of commuters this summer.
The document obtained by The Associated Press from Amtrak’s investigation describes what happened to a New Jersey Transit train on July 6.
The first car behind the locomotive on the inbound train derailed shortly before 9 p.m., according to the report, when the train switched from one track to another. The report blamed defective parts anchoring the rail as well as the train’s lateral motion when it switched to the left and, shortly after, back to the right.
About 180 passengers and crew members were on board. No injuries were reported.
The July 6 derailment occurred in an area where trains emerge from a tunnel under the Hudson River and pass through a crisscrossing network of tracks before they reach the station platforms. That’s the same area where an NJ Transit train derailed April 3, causing five days of disruptions to rail service up and down the corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston.