Re: NNG Multiple fatalities in Tacoma WA Amtrak derailment

As of this morning, they cleared the one coach that was partially hanging off the bridge, and it looked like the wheeled vehicles and the upside down coach were gone from under the bridge (just went under there a little while ago, left well over half an hour early, just in case). The radio is saying they might have 1-2 lanes of I-5 open by the afternoon commute.
They closed the back road through JBLM going to Mounts road that was open last night (only took us an extra half hour or so, that way). So now, they're turning people around at the center St exit, back onto I-5 north (I bet those drivers were livid to wait that long and then get turned around). No clue where they're going from there.
Some of my coworkers took almost 5 hours to get home last night, going various directions. If perimeter road at JBLM is closed tonight, God knows how long it'll take us to get home tonight. If that's the case and nothing has changed tomorrow, I might just call in sick for Wednesday.

As for my two pals on the train, late last night I got word on them. Both were badly dinged up (one has several fractures, including pelvis, fluid around the kidneys and a minor brain bleed, the other has broken ribs and sternum).
The engineer has some glass cuts to his face from his wild ride down that embankment.
I actually talked with the engineer at an event in October. I've been told that he does not have a record of being a fast runner.

As for the train, what I understand from people who worked on the tests is that the only test trains they ran were during the unusually dry summer we had, with trains that had very few people on board. The SOP they developed for southbound trains is to do an air dump when passing under the Center street exit overpass, which put those trains in a good speed for that curve. This train yesterday was mostly full and ran in very wet weather (as far as I know, they ran no Cascades tests on wet rails earlier this year). If the head end did the air dump like they were supposed to, the engineer might not be at fault for what happened next.

-Lee

Flickr photo set of my On30 layout