Federal safety officials are focusing on why a railroad switch was set in the wrong position sending an New York-to-Miami bound Amtrak train with more than 140 people aboard off the main line and onto a side track where it collided with an empty freight train early Sunday.
Two people were killed and 116 injured in the crash that occurred around 2:35 a.m. in Cayce, S.C., a few miles south of Columbia, officials said.
The Amtrak train, traveling on tracks owned and maintained by freight railway giant, CSX, was supposed to pass over the switch to continue on to the main line tracks, but instead was directed onto the pad-locked crossing into a portion of track known as “siding” which was occupied by a parked CSX train, Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said.
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