Action News Amtrak Service Restored

This second report is from Fox 29 Philadelphia, and it appears to have aired very shortly after the May 12, 2015 derailment—at a much earlier point in the investigation than the first report you gave me.

The report combines three developments: Amtrak service was resuming, lawsuits were beginning to be filed, and the NTSB investigation was still very much open.

Amtrak service resumes

The report begins at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, where Northeast Corridor service between Philadelphia and New York had resumed for the first time since the derailment.

Passengers interviewed expressed relief that normal service was returning, although one passenger says the tragedy and the victims remained on people’s minds.

Fox 29 actually rode a train through the Frankford Junction S-curve where Train 188 derailed. The report reiterates that the train had approached the curve at more than 100 mph.

Amtrak crews had been working continuously to repair the area. According to the report, that work included:

• Laying new rail.
• Installing an automatic train control safety system on the northbound side of the tracks.

That safety system immediately becomes significant because attorneys representing injured passengers argue that it should have been installed before the accident.

One attorney says:

“Lives have been disrupted, lives have been lost, and lives have been changed forever.”

The first lawsuits

Attorneys representing four passengers injured aboard Train 188 had filed suit against Amtrak.

The report describes the injuries suffered by two of their clients.

One woman, identified in the transcript as sounding like “Philly Even”—the automatic transcript has almost certainly mangled her name—reportedly came close to losing her arm.

Another passenger, advertising executive Dan Arman (again, I’d want to verify the spelling from the original video), was reportedly still receiving treatment for a torn ACL and teeth that were knocked out.

The attorneys describe what their clients experienced inside the derailing train as resembling a “war scene” and something out of a movie.

According to them, passengers said the derailment was shocking and:

“It came out of nowhere.”

They wanted to question Brandon Bostian

This connects directly with the later report you gave me.

The attorneys wanted Train 188 engineer Brandon Bostian deposed after he had been interviewed by the NTSB.

At this early stage, the significant information was that Bostian told investigators he couldn’t remember the crash.

That’s particularly interesting when you put this report beside the later one.

Here, shortly after the accident, the public story is essentially:

Bostian doesn’t remember the crash.

In the later report you gave me, approximately six months later, Bostian had recovered some memories of the period before the crash, including recollections concerning speed and braking, although his memory remained “foggy” during the critical portion.

But the NTSB was explicitly keeping every possibility open

This report contains an important statement from NTSB member Robert Sumwalt.

He cautions against reaching a conclusion about what happened:

“We’re looking at everything at this point.”

And, even more explicitly:

“We have not ruled anything out, nor have we ruled anything in.”

So at the time of this report, the NTSB wasn’t publicly blaming Bostian or identifying a specific cause.

That’s a significant contrast with the later report you provided, where investigators had accumulated enough evidence to say they found no evidence of mechanical/equipment problems involving the locomotive, tracks or signals, no alcohol or drugs in Bostian’s system, and no cellphone use while he was operating the train.

The $200 million liability issue

There’s also a major legal issue mentioned at the end.

More than 200 people had been injured, but at that time federal law imposed a $200 million aggregate liability cap on damages arising from a passenger rail accident.

Attorneys representing victims were considering challenging that limitation.

In other words, regardless of the ultimate value of all the victims’ claims combined, there was a statutory ceiling on the total amount potentially recoverable from Amtrak arising from this particular accident.

One intriguing thing missing from your transcript

The anchor introduces the segment by saying federal investigators had announced new findings concerning “what might have happened to the locomotive’s windshield.”

But the portion you’ve pasted never returns to the windshield issue.

That’s notable because there was an important early investigative question surrounding the possibility that something struck Train 188 shortly before the derailment. Other trains in the Philadelphia area reported being struck by objects around that time, and investigators examined damage to Train 188’s windshield.

So if you’re looking at these videos because you’re trying to reconstruct what investigators knew and what Bostian was saying at different stages, I’d want to see the missing portion concerning that windshield. It could be important.

And when you put your two reports together, there is already a useful timeline emerging:

Immediately after the crash: Bostian says he doesn’t remember the crash/critical period → NTSB says nothing has been ruled in or out → possible external/mechanical explanations are still being investigated.

Six months later: Bostian now remembers portions of the previously blank period → describes the remaining memory as “foggy” → mechanical, track and signal failures have not been found → toxicology is negative → cellphone use has been eliminated → attorneys begin publicly emphasizing what they characterize as inconsistencies in his evolving recollection.