While it seems more probable that the engineer forgot the additional curve at Frankfort Junction and sped up prematurely anticipating the higher speed section too early (click on image to enlarge), those windscreen holes do seem well grouped. We'll certainly see after a thorough NTSB and FBI investigation, Noting that the older engines on this line are often equipped with wire screening to protect the windshields, this was a newer engine, perhaps yet to be equipped.
And certainly as other diarists have noted, this is only symptomatic of the larger legislative issues of transportation infrastructure and financing that continue to be unmet, considering how long it took to get the Northeast Corridor to get higher speed Acela service, to get full electrification on the mainline between Boston and DC and even to get Wi-Fi onto the non-Acela passenger cars.
FBI to Examine Amtrak Train After Crew Reports Projectile May Have Hit It
PHILADELPHIA—The FBI will examine the windshield and front end of an Amtrak train involved in a deadly derailment this week after the train’s crew reported that it may have been hit by a projectile, the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday....
Sumwalt said a conductor aboard the train reported hearing a conversation in which the engineer of a nearby local regional train told her engineer that his engine had been hit by an object or shot at and she thought she heard her engineer say the same thing may have happened to him.
The conductor said that right after that conversation she felt rumbling, followed by the train car turning over on its side.
Sumwalt said his team has "seen damage to the left hand lower portion of the Amtrak windshield" and has asked the FBI to look at it.
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority spokeswoman Jerri Williams told the Philadelphia Inquirer at the time of the accident that a Trenton, N.J.-bound commuter train had been struck by an "unknown projectile" around 9:10 p.m. Tuesday, breaking the engineer's window. The Amtrak train derailed about 9:30 p.m. three miles away.
SEPTA does not yet know what caused the damage to its train that night, Williams said.
SEPTA trains traveling through the area — including one of the poorest and most violent parts of the city — have had projectiles thrown at them in the past, whether by vandals or teenagers, she said. It was unusual that the SEPTA train was forced to stop on Tuesday night.
Robert Sumwalt, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) working on last week's Amtrak derailment that killed eight people, expressed skepticism that someone shot at the train before it came off the tracks last Tuesday night.
"I'd like to downplay that part. I've now seen the fracture pattern. It looks like something about the size of a grapefruit, if you will. And it did not even penetrate the entire windshield," Sumwalt said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday.
The NTSB said last week that a projectile appears to have hit the windshield of the train prior to the crash. The FBI is helping the agency analyze the fractural pattern of crack in the windshield, but Sumwalt cautioned that there is still not enough information to determine whether it was related to the train derailment.
"It could be completely coincidental or it could be causal. And that's exactly what we intend to find out," he said.