NORTHFIELD — Six of the seven people hospitalized in an Amtrak train derailment have been released, officials said late Monday.
Amtrak train No. 55, the southbound Vermonter, struck a rock slide on the tracks at about 10:30 a.m. Monday in Northfield. The train’s locomotive and four of the five passenger cars, on their regular run from St. Albans to Washington, D.C., derailed about two miles south of Northfield, just south of the high-level bridge over Vermont 12A.
Six people were taken by ambulance to the Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin, and a seventh was airlifted to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. Amtrak reported at press time that of the seven – four passengers and three crew members – only one remained hospitalized.
The train was carrying four crew members and 98 passengers, according to Gov. Peter Shumlin, who spoke at an emergency news conference held at Norwich University’s Plumley Armory three hours after the derailment. The coach directly behind the locomotive was unoccupied, according to a passenger who spoke with VTDigger, and wished to remain unidentified.
The locomotive and the first four cars behind it derailed. The rear-most car, a food service car, did not leave the tracks.
The locomotive came to rest in a small streambed adjacent to the tracks. Shumlin reported that an undetermined amount of diesel fuel had spilled from the engine’s tank.
Two passengers indicated that the engineer had hit the brakes immediately before the derailment, referring to the emergency-brake application that is part of every Amtrak engineer’s training. Another passenger, who identified himself only as Richard, was uncertain as to the sequence of events, saying simply, “It all seemed to happen at once.”
Passenger Shirley Brown, of Hadley, Massachusetts, said, “it just felt like it was traveling over rocks. It was very crunchy and rolling around.”
“I heard the brakes hit, and then we hit the rocks,” Terry Gonyeau of Burlington told VTDigger. “The engineer did a good job. It could have been much worse.”
Emergency vehicles from as far away as Colchester lined Vermont 12A, and service trucks from the New England Central Railroad, which owns the track, also reached the scene promptly. Local school buses appeared within an hour and a half of the accident to take passengers to the armory, where Norwich University made beverages and snacks available to them.
The passengers included about 50 participants in a tour organized by Chicago-based Vacations by Rail. Within three hours of the derailment, a chartered coach had appeared at the armory and whisked them on their way, according to their original itinerary.
Brown spoke of first-responders who “exuded assurance” as they helped passengers from the train, but she had harsher words for the reaction from Amtrak. Speaking three-and-a-half hours after the accident, she said she hadn’t yet heard anything from the national passenger rail provider through its electronic notification system.
“Amtrak needs a fire lit under them, but all these other people were Johnny-on-the-spot,” she said, referring to the local first-responders.
An hour later, Amtrak spokeswoman Chelsea Kopta said the company was working to contact the travelers affected. A statement from her referred to “the reported derailment of Train 55 . . . in the area of Roxbury, Vermont,” but provided little other information. By 3:30, however, the company had put out a statement that “Amtrak management continues to respond to the derailment of Train 55, the Vermonter, near Northfield, Vermont.” Amtrak personnel were dispatched promptly to Northfield, Kopta and Shumlin noted.
Shumlin said that “five or six really big chunks of ledge” had come down on the tracks, which follow a curve through the densely wooded area. He said, and Amtrak subsequently confirmed, that the rail provider would supply bus transportation for all Vermonter passengers north of Springfield, Massachusetts, until the tracks could be cleared and any necessary repairs made.
“This is not an issue of the conductor or someone driving too quickly,” he stated, adding that everyone responding to the derailment “has done extraordinary work.”
The speed limit for passenger trains on the track in question could not be determined precisely by press time, but is either 50 or 59 mph.
The derailment occurred immediately south of the so-called Harlow Bridge over Vermont 12A and the Dog River. The bridge was the site of a horrific accident in 1867, when a train moving too quickly was unable to stop for an apparent obstruction, according to an account published by the Northfield Historical Society. Fifteen people were killed.
The derailment also reminded some observers of the July 1984 Amtrak derailment in Essex Junction, in which five people were killed and 29 were injured.
Shumlin said Monday’s derailment raised some policy issues.
“We spend huge amounts of federal money on blasting ledge from highways. We should do the same for rail,” he said. “Rail is safe. The Vermonter is a great train. Rail is important for climate change. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
