JOPLIN, MONTANA — At least three people were killed and 50 were injured after Amtrak’s westbound Empire Builder train derailed in Montana at 4 p.m.
Saturday, September 25, but the cause is still unknown.
The Associated Press spoke to David Clarke, director of the Center for Transportation Research at the University of Tennessee, who noted that the derailment occurred at or near a switch, where the railway goes from a single to a double track.
The two locomotives and two cars at the front of the train reached the split and continued onwards, though one passenger reported being thrown around inside.
However, the eight cars behind those cars all derailed, and Clarke suggests “it might have been that the front of the train hit the switch and it started fish-tailing and that flipped the back part of the train.” The New York Times spoke to one expert who summarized the general direction any investigation might take, explaining that right now the incident does not appear to be human error, and thus it is likely “something broke.”