The Washington Post, 4/4:
Were rules violated in Amtrak wreck that killed two workers on the tracks?
Basic rules of railroading and federal regulations should have prevented the Amtrak derailment near Philadelphia on Sunday that killed two maintenance workers and injured 31 people aboard the train, those guidelines indicate.
Just what went wrong that caused a southbound Amtrak train to collide with a backhoe doing work on the track is the province of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Railroad Administration.
But in the 212 years since the steam locomotive was invented, railroads have established rules to keep trains from running down their own maintenance workers. Those rules have been cemented with federal regulation and law.
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