UPDATE: May 13, 9:10 p.m.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Amtrak train that derailed Tuesday evening in Philadelphia was traveling about 107 miles per hour as it approached a curve where the speed limit is less than half that, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday the train's own data showed it traveling almost exactly that speed — 106 miles per hour — before jumping the tracks in an old industrial neighborhood not far from the Delaware River shortly after 9 p.m. Investigators also said the train engineer applied emergency braking shortly before the crash.
Surveillance video viewed by the AP shows the passenger train, which was roughly 662 feet long, passed the camera in just over five seconds. But because the video inexplicably plays back slightly slower than in real time, it took the train a little more than four seconds to move past a fixed point on the screen.
That means the train was traveling about 107 miles per hour just before it derailed and tipped over, tearing the cars apart and killing at least seven people. The NTSB announced its findings less than an hour after the AP's initial report.
More than 140 people went to hospitals to be evaluated or treated from the crash, and several were critically injured.
The surveillance camera from which the AP reviewed video was located at an industrial building a few hundred feet before a bend in the tracks, where the speed limit was only 50 miles per hour.
Light from an apparent explosion or a brilliant electrical discharge is visible in the video just over three seconds after the train passes. That would indicate the train was entering the curve as it began to derail, with the train located several hundred feet east of the camera.
The AP reviewed both the surveillance footage and government mapping data to determine the train's speed and location. That data showed the relative location of the surveillance camera to the train's path, the bends in the railroad tracks and the eventual location of the crash site.
The Amtrak engineer at the train's control refused to talk to police Wednesday and declined to provide a statement to authorities.
3:20 p.m.
Federal accident investigators say an Amtrak train was going over 100 mph prior to a derailment that killed seven people and injured about 200 others in Philadelphia.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a Twitter message that preliminary data showed the excessive speed, but further calibrations are being conducted.
The derailment took place as the train entered a curve where the speed limit is 50 mph. The speed limit on the track just prior to the curve is 70 mph.
The accident closed the nation's busiest rail corridor between New York and Washington.
The dead included an employee of The Associated Press and a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy.
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2:30 p.m.
An analysis by The Associated Press of surveillance video just before the deadly crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia indicates it was traveling about 107 miles per hour as it approached a curve where the speed limit was 50 miles per hour.
The video shows the train — which was roughly 662 feet long — passes the camera in just over five seconds. But AP found that the surveillance video plays back slightly slower than in real time.
So, adjusting for the slower playback puts the train's estimated speed at 107 miles per hour. The surveillance camera was located at a site just before the bend in the tracks.
The crash killed seven people and injured more than 200.
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1:55 p.m.
Philadelphia police officials say the engineer of the Amtrak train that crashed, killing seven people and injuring more than 200, declined to provide a statement to investigators.
They say the engineer also had an attorney when he left a meeting with investigators. The engineer has not yet been identified.
Investigators are trying to determine why the train slipped off the tracks while rounding a sharp curve Tuesday night northeast of Philadelphia's city center.
Authorities say the locomotive's data recorder has been recovered and that it should yield critical information, including the speed of the train.
The speed limit just before the curve was 70 mph and on the curve it was 50 mph.
City officials are holding another briefing Wednesday afternoon. The National Transportation Safety Board also plans a 5 p.m. briefing.
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1:45 p.m.
A 20-year-old U.S. Naval Academy midshipman from New York City is one of the seven people killed in Tuesday's Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus identified the midshipman as Justin Zemser.
The popular student leader and athlete was on leave from the Annapolis, Maryland, institution and heading home to Rockaway Beach, New York.
Zemser and his family were temporarily forced from the community by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
He was elected student government president at Channel View High School and was a two-time letter winner on the school's football team.
He played sprint football, a form of the sport for players under 172 pounds, at the Naval Academy.
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1:10 p.m.
The Federal Railroad Administration says Amtrak inspected tracks in Philadelphia just hours before a deadly derailment and found no defects.
The agency says the speed limit on the track just before the accident site is 70 mph, and 50 mph for the curve near where the train came to a rest.
The New York-bound train derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, killing at least seven people and injuring 200 others.
Federal authorities will look at a variety of evidence as they try to pinpoint the cause. A former head of railroad accident investigations at the National Transportation Safety Board, Bob Chipkevich, says they'll focus on the train's event data recorder, video recordings and the condition of the rails, rail ties and train cars.
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12:50 p.m.Another body has been pulled from the wreckage of an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia, increasing the death toll to seven.
Philadelphia Fire Department Executive Chief Clifford Gilliam says the body was found Wednesday as crews combed through the mangled train.
Authorities previously confirmed the deaths of six people. They include an Associated Press employee and a U.S. Naval Academy midshipman.
Rescue crews are searching the mangled wreckage as investigators try to determine why the train hurtled off the tracks.
The train was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members as it headed from Washington to New York City along the nation's busiest rail corridor.
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12:05 p.m.
An Associated Press video software architect is among the six people killed in the Philadelphia Amtrak train derailment.
Jim Gaines, a 48-year-old father of two, had attended meetings in Washington. He was returning home to Plainsboro, New Jersey, when the train derailed Tuesday night. His death was confirmed by his wife, Jacqueline.
Gaines joined the AP in 1998 and was a key factor in nearly all of the news agency's video initiatives, including a service providing live video to hundreds of clients worldwide.
Gaines won AP's "Geek of the Month" award in May 2012 for his "tireless dedication and contagious passion" to technological innovation.
He was part of a team that won the AP Chairman's Prize in 2006 for developing the agency's Online Video Network.
He is also survived by 16-year-old son Oliver and 11-year-old daughter Anushka.
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11:20 a.m.
The U.S. Naval Academy says one of the people killed in the Philadelphia Amtrak crash was a midshipman at the school.
In a statement Wednesday morning, the school said the midshipman was on leave and on the way home when the train derailed Tuesday night, killing at least six people.
The school in Annapolis, Maryland, notified the brigade of midshipman, staff and faculty on Wednesday morning.
The statement says that out of respect for the privacy of the midshipman's family, it is withholding the identity of the midshipman for 24 hours following the notification of next of kin.
Hospitals also have treated more than 200 people injured in the crash.
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10:30 a.m.
Philadelphia's mayor says the train equivalent of a black box has been recovered from the wreckage of the crash that killed at least six people.
Officials held a news conference Wednesday morning to give an update on the investigation into the derailment.
Mayor Michael Nutter says the train conductor was injured in Tuesday night's crash and received medical treatment.
Another city official says hospitals have treated more than 200 people from the crash.
Robert Sumwalt with the National Transportation Safety Board says investigators are looking at factors including track signals, the train's operation and the conductor's actions.
The train derailed in the city's Port Richmond section. It was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members as it headed from Washington to New York City along the nation's busiest rail corridor.
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9:40 a.m.
A Philadelphia commuter train was hit by a projectile about 20 minutes before an Amtraktrain derailed a few miles up the track.
A spokeswoman for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority says there's no indication that the incident is related to the derailment.
SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams says they don't know what the projectile was. It broke the engineer's window around 9:25 p.m. Tuesday near SEPTA's North Philadelphia station. No injuries were reported.
Williams says the Trenton-bound commuter train was stopped and the incident was being investigated when the Amtrak derailment happened about 3½ miles away.
Williams says Amtrak dispatches SEPTA's Trenton line and was aware of the incident.
Six people were killed and dozens more were injured in Tuesday night's Amtrak derailment.
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8:40 a.m.
A deadly Philadelphia derailment has shut down Amtrak between New York and Philadelphia, making life difficult for travelers.
At Penn Station in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, travelers headed toward Washington were scrambling for alternatives.
Bill Atkins, a 48-year-old attorney, was trying to get home to Tysons Corner, Virginia, after a New York business trip. He didn't learn about the train crash until he woke up Wednesday morning.
He says he's in a daze trying to figure out what to do. He settled on trying to fly home. With no flights available from LaGuardia or Kennedy, he says he might go to the airport in Newark, New Jersey, and "just stand in line."
Six people were killed and dozens more were injured in Tuesday night's derailment.
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7:55 a.m.
One of the passengers on the train that derailed Tuesday night in Philadelphia says she was thrown from her seat when the car she was in turned onto its side.
Jillian Jorgensen covers politics for The New York Observer. She is 27 and lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.
She tells The Associated Press that things got "very bumpy" and she flew across the train. She says she eventually landed underneath some seats.
She says she heard people screaming and saw people trapped. She says one man was lying still in the center of the car and his face was covered in blood. She got out via an emergency exit window.
Six people are dead and dozens more injured. The train was headed from Washington to New York City.
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7:45 a.m.
Heavy equipment is being brought in at the scene of an Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia that killed at least six people.
All seven cars of Northeast Regional Train 188 ended in disarray Tuesday night, sending 144 people to hospitals. Several are in critical condition.
Temple University Hospital's Dr. Herbert Cushing says most of the injured sustained fractures.
The derailment occurred where the tracks curve in the city's Port Richmond section.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators will begin their investigation to determine what caused it.
The train was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members as it headed from Washington to New York City along the nation's busiest rail corridor.
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7:30 a.m.
A sixth person has died following an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia.
Temple University Hospital's Dr. Herbert Cushing says a person died there overnight from a chest injury. That's in addition to the five deaths announced by Mayor Michael Nutter on Tuesday night.
The National Transportation Safety Board expects to have full crews at the scene Wednesday morning to try to determine what happened.
The train was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members as it headed from Washington to New York City along the nation's busiest rail corridor.
Amtrak has modified Northeast Corridor service. Trains will run between Washington and Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and New York and Boston. There will be no Amtrakservice between New York and Philadelphia. New Jersey Transit will honor Amtrak tickets between New York City and Trenton.
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6:55 a.m.
One car is mangled, three rail cars are overturned and three others are a twisted mess following an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia that killed at least five people.
All seven cars of Northeast Regional Train 188 ended in disarray Tuesday night, sending 144 people to hospitals. At least six are in critical condition.
The National Transportation Safety Board expects to have full crews at the scene Wednesday morning to try to determine what happened.
The train was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members as it headed from Washington to New York City along the nation's busiest rail corridor.
Amtrak has had to modify Northeast Corridor service. Trains will run between Washington and Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and New York and Boston. There will be noAmtrak service between New York and Philadelphia. New Jersey Transit will honor Amtraktickets between New York City and Trenton.
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6:15 a.m.
Daylight has revealed the destruction and devastation caused by an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia.
All seven cars of Northeast Regional Train 188 ended in disarray Tuesday night, killing at least five people and sending 144 people to hospitals. At least six are in critical condition.
It's not known what caused the cars to leave the tracks. National Transportation Safety Board investigators are headed to the scene.
The train was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members as it headed from Washington to New York City along the nation's busiest rail corridor.
An Associated Press manager, Paul Cheung, was on the train and said "the train started to decelerate, like someone had slammed the brake."
Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy was on the train and said he helped people.
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5:45 a.m.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators are headed to the scene of an Amtrakaccident in Philadelphia that killed at least five people and injured dozens of others.
Northeast Regional Train 188 was headed to New York from Washington when it derailed in the city's Port Richmond section shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday.
More than 140 people went to hospitals to be evaluated or treated, and six were critically injured.
The derailment has closed a major section of the nation's busiest rail corridor. It is having an impact on commuter rails.
Mayor Michael Nutter called the scene "an absolute disastrous mess."
The mayor says all seven train cars, including the engine, were in "various stages of disarray."
He said there were cars that were "completely overturned, on their side, ripped apart."
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This is the latest information. The previous story is below.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Daylight on Wednesday revealed the destruction and devastation caused by an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia that left at least six people dead and injured dozens more, several critically, as survivors recalled a terrifying wreck that plunged them into darkness and chaos.
Some passengers had to scramble through the windows of toppled cars to escape. One of the seven cars was completely mangled.
The accident closed the nation's busiest rail corridor between New York and Washington as federal investigators begin sifting through the twisted remains to determine what went wrong.
Train 188, a Northeast Regional, left Washington, D.C. and was headed to New York when it derailed shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday. Amtrak said the train was carrying 238 passengers and five crew members.
"It is an absolute disastrous mess," Mayor Michael Nutter said. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."
Nutter confirmed five deaths and said not all the people on the train had been accounted for. Temple University Hospital's Dr. Herbert Cushing said Wednesday a person died there overnight from a chest injury.
More than 140 people went to hospitals to be evaluated or treated for injuries that included burns and fractures.
Amtrak said the cause of the derailment was not known and that it was investigating. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration were also dispatching investigators to the site.
Passenger Jillian Jorgensen, 27, was seated in the quiet car — the second passenger car — and said the train was going "fast enough for me to be worried" when it began a hard bank to the right. The train derailed, the lights went out and Jorgensen was thrown from her seat. She said she "flew across the train" and landed underneath some seats that she assumed had come loose from the floor.
Jorgensen, a reporter for The New York Observer who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, said she managed to wriggle free as fellow passengers screamed. She saw one man lying still, his face covered in blood, and a woman with a broken leg. Eventually, she climbed out an emergency exit window and a firefighter helped her down a ladder to safety.
"It was terrifying and awful, and as it was happening it just did not feel like the kind of thing you could walk away from, so I feel very lucky," Jorgensen said in an email to The Associated Press. "The scene in the car I was in was total disarray and people were clearly in a great deal of pain."
Early Wednesday morning, authorities on the scene seemed to be girding for a long haul. One sign: several portable toilets were delivered for investigators and recovery workers. Utility poles near the wreck could be seen leaning into the tracks.
All seven train cars, including the engine, were in "various stages of disarray," Nutter said. He said there were cars that were "completely overturned, on their side, ripped apart."
The front of the train was going into a turn when it started to shake before coming to a sudden stop.
An Associated Press manager, Paul Cheung, was on the train and said he was watching a video on his laptop when "the train started to decelerate, like someone had slammed the brake."
"Then suddenly you could see everything starting to shake," he said. "You could see people's stuff flying over me."
Cheung said another passenger urged him to escape from the back of his car, which he did. He said he saw passengers trying to escape through the windows of cars tipped on their sides.
"The front of the train is really mangled," he said. "It's a complete wreck. The whole thing is like a pile of metal."
Gaby Rudy, an 18-year-old from Livingston, New Jersey, was headed home from George Washington University when the derailment occurred. She said she was nearly asleep when she suddenly felt the train "fall off the track."
The next few minutes were filled with broken glass and smoke, said Rudy, who suffered minor injuries. "They told us we had to run away from the train in case another train came," she said.
Another passenger, Daniel Wetrin, was among more than a dozen people taken to a nearby elementary school afterward.
"I think the fact that I walked off (the train) kind of made it even more surreal because a lot of people didn't walk off," he said. "I walked off as if, like, I was in a movie. There were people standing around, people with bloody faces. There were people, chairs, tables mangled about in the compartment ... power cables all buckled down as you stepped off the train."
Police swarming around Tuesday's derailment site, in Port Richmond, a working-class area with a mix of warehouses, industrial buildings and homes, told people to get back, away from the train. They pleaded with curious onlookers: "Do NOT go to scene of derailment. Please allow first responders room to work."
Roads all around the crash site were blocked off. Hundreds of firefighters surrounded the train cars, taking people out.
Several injured people, including one man complaining of neck pain, were rolled away on stretchers. Others wobbled while walking away or were put on city buses. An elderly woman was given oxygen.
Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy was on the train and said he helped people. He tweeted photos of firefighters helping other people in the wreckage.
"Pray for those injured," he said.
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware also was on the Amtrak train but got off in Wilmington, shortly before the derailment. He later tweeted that he was "grateful to be home safe and sound."
The area where the derailment occurred is known as Frankford Junction and has a big curve. It's not far from where one of the nation's deadliest train accidents occurred: the 1943 derailment of The Congressional Limited, from Washington to New York, which killed 79people.
Amtrak said rail service on the busy Northeast Corridor between New York and Philadelphia had been stopped. The mayor, citing the mangled train tracks and downed wires, said, "There's no circumstance under which there would be any Amtrak service this week through Philadelphia."
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Associated Press reporter Maryclaire Dale contributed to this story.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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