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Investigators examining last month's fatal crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia now believe they know whether the engineer was using his phone when the derailment happened, a source with knowledge of the probe said Wednesday. The source didn't reveal the National Transportation Safety Board investigators' conclusions. But the NTSB is expected to make an announcement about the crash at 9 a.m. ET Wednesday.

Investigators examining last month’s fatal crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia now believe they know whether the engineer was using his phone when the derailment happened, a source with knowledge of the probe said Wednesday. The source didn’t reveal the National Transportation Safety Board investigators’ conclusions. But the NTSB is expected to make an announcement about the crash at 9 a.m. ET Wednesday. Amtrak Northeast Regional Train No. 188 derailed minutes after it left a Philadelphia station on the night of May 12, leaving eight people dead and more than 200 injured. The New York-bound train had just entered...

A Chicago-bound Amtrak train had an unfortunate encounter with a tractor-trailer carrying 70,000 pounds of bacon that was “obstructing the tracks” last Friday, June 5 — the same day we reported on Indiana’s amazing bacon lottery. The train, Texas Eagle Train 22, collided with the truck near Illinois Route 53, and managed to overturn the truck, splitting it in half. “There's boxes everywhere [sic],” a passenger told NBC Chicago. “But somehow the driver was OK.” None of the crew or passengers were injured in the crash, but we assume all hope for the bacon was lost. However, if there were...

While debating proposed cuts to Amtrak’s budget, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) argued that the government subsidized train system is necessary, especially during disasters. “What is it - that we don’t support transportation infrastructure?” Brown said on the House floor Thursday. “When we had 9/11 – Amtrak was the only entity that was moving people. When we had Katrina – Amtrak. We had over 3,000 people to die because they couldn’t move around the area.” According to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 1,833 people died in relation to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Amtrak...

Federal investigators looking into the Amtrak derailment that killed eight people and injured scores of others in Philadelphia last month are trying to determine whether the engineer was using his cellphone when his train approached a curve at more than twice the speed limit.

Investigators looking into last month’s deadly Amtrak derailment have found “no anomalies” in the tracks, signals or breaking systems of train #188, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board released Tuesday, underscoring the key outstanding question of their ongoing inquiry: Why did the locomotive speed into a sharp Philadelphia curve at 106 miles an hour? The NTSB said it is continuing its examination of engineer Brandon Bostian’s cell phone records. Bostian, who said he cannot recall the events shortly before the crash, reported to the NTSB that his phone was in a bag at the time...

Just before Congress slunk away for the three-day weekend — which it was, of course, planning to stretch into a week — senators from the Northeast held a press conference to denounce Republicans for underfunding Amtrak passenger rail service. “Amtrak has some infrastructure that is so old it was built and put into service when Jesse James and Butch Cassidy were still alive and robbing trains,” said Senator Charles Schumer of New York. “In Connecticut we have a bridge that was built when Grover Cleveland was president,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. Now you have to admit, this is...

Via Breitbart. Thanks to Fox News’s rules, this is the guy who might take Bobby Jindal’s spot at the first GOP presidential debate in August. He’s ranked in the top five in more than one Republican 2016 poll, no doubt by dint of pure name recognition. If he decides to run — which is unlikely, but work with me here — he’ll probably be one of the 10 who make the cut for the debate. And that’ll turn it into the Trump show for the media, no matter how eager GOP voters might be to hear, say, Rubio go at...

Senate Democrats on Thursday demanded that Republicans provide more money for Amtrak so the railroad can tackle a $21 billion maintenance and repair backlog, including replacing tunnels more than a century old. Democrats at a news conference cited last week's deadly crash in Philadelphia and said the backlog is compromising safety and service. Democrats want to Congress to give Amtrak the entire $2 billion in subsidies the railroad requested for the budget year that starts Oct. 1. They say GOP lawmakers have starved the railroad financially for years. A Republican-controlled House panel approved a spending bill the day after the...

Former White House Chief of Staff and currently mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, whose city is rushing to be the next Detroit after decades of big government excesses, once said that a crisis was a terrible thing to waste since it allows you to get things done you couldn’t get done in a saner atmosphere. The Amtrak derailment outside Philadelphia is the latest case in point. Never mind that the Antrak train that crashed outside Philadelphia, killing seven, was being driven at 106 miles per hour around a curve that was designed for 50 or that the “positive train control”...

Investigators are combing through phone records, locomotive data, radio transmissions and surveillance video to determine if the engineer in last week's deadly Amtrak derailment was using his cellphone while at the controls, federal authorities said Wednesday. Brandon Bostian's phone records show calls were made, text messages were sent and data was used the day of the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said, but it remains unclear if the phone was used while the train was in motion. Investigators won't be able make that determination until after a time-consuming analysis comparing time stamps from Bostian's subpoenaed phone records with those...

Earlier this year, Aaron Heuser of Eugene, Oregon, had to travel to Washington, D.C. The trip had two purposes: The 37-year-old mathematician was officially leaving his job at National Institutes of Health and starting a new position at a private firm. Since he is terrified of flying he booked himself a sleeper car on Amtrak. Upon reaching Reno, Nevada, there was an unexpected knock at his door. “There was a DEA badge on the window,” he said. “Having a good reason to be making this trip and being a law abiding citizen, I opened the door and politely asked if...

When a Republican lawmaker in 2011 asked an Obama administration Office of Management and Budget official to name regulations where costs were not justified by benefits, the official had a ready answer. "There is only one big one that comes to mind," said Cass Sunstein, then administrator of the White House OMB's Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs. "It is called Positive Train Control.''

The Amtrak crash outside of Philadelphia was an invitation for practically every politician in the Northeast and every transit expert in America to complain about lack of funding for the county’s infrastructure. They didn’t even wait to know what was the cause of the tragedy to take to the airwaves, and weren’t deterred when it emerged that the engineer had been going twice the speed limit around a tight curve when Amtrak Train 188 derailed. They cared only for reciting the usual litany of laments for our “crumbling” infrastructure and our lack of high-speed rail, which is supposedly a stinging...

The union for Amtrak’s locomotive engineers on Tuesday urged the railroad to put a second engineer at the controls of trains on the busy Northeast Corridor, where a derailment killed eight people and injured more than 200 others. “The public would never accept an airline operation with a single person in the cockpit,” the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said in a statement. “There is no reason that rail employees and rail passengers’ lives should be viewed any differently.” Brandon Bostian, 32, was alone in the locomotive of Train 188 when it derailed May 12, about 10 minutes after...

WASHINGTON — For the first time, Amtrak could face a $200 million payout to train crash victims — the limit set by Congress. But that may be too low to cover the costs of the eight lives lost and more than 200 people injured in last week's derailment in Philadelphia. That payout cap for a single passenger rail incident was part of a late effort in 1997 to pass a law that would rescue Amtrak from financial ruin and help it one day become independent. ~snip~ Using past passenger rail accidents as a guide, some lawyers expect damages from the...

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A transit train driver says he saw a “trespasser” on the tracks moments before an unknown object struck a window on the train. The SEPTA train was struck on the same night and in close proximity to the Amtrak train that derailed on May 12th in Philadelphia. According to SEPTA officials, the engineer saw a trespasser on the track moments before an unidentified object smashed a window.

The last week has been unimaginably difficult for many Americans who lost friends or family members in the tragic derailment of Northeast Regional Amtrak train 188, which crashed on a curved track just north of downtown Philadelphia on Tuesday evening. Eight lives were lost, eight more individuals remain in critical condition and more than 200 were injured. The day after the derailment, I visited the scene to speak with Amtrak President Joe Boardman, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Acting Administrator Sarah Feinberg, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Vice Chairman Bella Dinh-Zarr and Board Member Robert Sumwalt, and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter....

The engineer of the death train was a homosexual and a gay activist who “liked several LGBTI pages on Facebook,” a gay news site. “The engineer who was involved in Tuesday night’s Amtrak train crash is Brandon Bostian,” says gaystarnews.com. Interesting now is how the media are equivocating and blaming those old meanies, the Republicans. One site commenter to the outing of this 32 year old engineer says, “the fact is a gay activist is untouchable in the main stream media. Once his sexual preference came out, the story started changing and the blame will go towards needing more money...

Federal officials this weekend revealed the train that crashed Tuesday, killing 8, was one of two struck by objects that day. Investigators are now looking into the possibility the doomed train's windshield was struck in the moments before the crash. Amtrak, meanwhile, has been ordered to expand speed-restriction system in area of derailment in Philadelphia. NTSB investigators, however, said Sunday that no communication from the train indicated it had been hit by an object. ...snip EPTA, Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, said there's no indication the object that hit the commuter rail train is related to the Amtrak derailment. Philadelphia Mayor...