Commuter train traveling 60 mph over speed limit during accident

By Vince Mancini

Published on September 19, 2005

NTSB acting chairman Mark Rosenker said Sunday that the Metra train was traveling 69 mph when it should not have been going faster than 10 mph as it switched tracks at a crossover before jumping the tracks on Saturday.

The information came from a preliminary reading of one of the train's black boxes.

The double-decker commuter train was traveling to Chicago from Joliet with 185 passengers and four crew members onboard Saturday morning when its locomotive and five rail cars jumped the tracks 5 miles south of downtown.

Jane Cuthbert, 22, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago died on the train, and Allison Walsh, 38, a researcher at the Brookfield Zoo died at the hospital. Dozens of others were injured.

The train began to derail as it switched tracks, striking a steel bridge just beyond the crossover. Rosenker said that the collision damaged at least one rail car and likely contributed to at least one of the fatalities.

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