Free Republic

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.

An assistant conductor on the Amtrak train that derailed Tuesday said she heard the engineer tell someone the train had been struck by something, the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday. NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said the 39-year-old assistant conductor, interviewed for the first time Friday, could hear the radio transmissions of engineer Brandon Bostian. She heard the engineer of a SEPTA train say that the windshield of his train had been struck by something and that he had placed his train in an “emergency stop.” She said she then heard “her engineer” say he believed their train may have...

The 39-year-old assistant conductor was listening in on Brandon Bostian’s radio conversations with a SEPTA train engineer, who told the Amtrak engineer his train had been hit by a rock or shot at. The SEPTA engineer said he had a broken windshield and made an emergency stop, she said. Bostian also said something about his train being struck by an object, she told National Transportation Safety Board investigators Friday.

PHILADELPHIA — An assistant conductor on the Amtrak train that derailed on Tuesday believes she heard the engineer tell another regional train operator in a radio transmission that the train had been struck by something just before the accident, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. At a news conference on Friday, Robert L. Sumwalt, the safety board official who is leading the investigation, said the F.B.I. had been asked to examine what he described as a fist-size impact area found on the lower left side of the train’s windshield. Officials said that the F.B.I. had been called in because...