important part of the initial investigation by both ntsb and the federal rarld ilroad administrati administration. back with us, mary, i want to ask you in the same context. 78 passengers and five crew members on this train of what was the inaugural run of this service. seattle to portland. if that s routine, is it sufficient? five crew on that train? it s probably sufficient depending on the services were for the passengers. given modern trains, less people than that can actually run the train. there were so many things that are automated on modern trains. one of the things they will in on are the reports for local media is they were modifying and testing the track and the services as early as the beginning of december. there was a lot of criticism
in tack ohm tacoma, washington the first day they were providing the service. we are going the pause for one moment now to let our fox stations join us. this is fox news coverage of an amtrak train derailment. i m jon scott in new york. this on the 18th of december amtrak was crowing about its new service to the amtrak cascades tacoma dome station and it looks like a terrible train derailment within a mile or so of the new station. you can see an amtrak train left dangling over interstate 5 right there along the river in washington we can t tell for sure from this still photo how many cars actually came down on the highway and whether any vehicles or automobiles were underneath them. amtrak has not said anything
from the department of transportation that said they had struck a truck. now how he knew that being back in the train, i don t know unless he got up there and spoke to somebody. but you know, it is unusual if they did strike something that the engine stays on and other cars derailed. there are so many things involved in what took place here. i don t know exactly if that what the track speed is right there. it looks like they must have been going at a slower rate of speed, otherwise i believe that car probably would have gone all the way off. melissa: we know they were heading on a new route to a new station. is this the first train to go through there or if others went ahead of it today? i believe this was the first one is what i ve been told. they thought it was the very first one. they usually go around what is called the lake view subdivision and this time they actually come right along the river and it is a shorter route and faster route and track speed is higher. at one poin
that i believe tom was speaking of minutes ago. we don t know if it was a portion of new track where the derailment occurred but obviously there s a lot of questions on the first day. the very first train that left on this early service and now there s a derailment with many people injured. alex, can you tell us what was the maximum speed they were hitting along this route? they want eed to show off a hig speed train. what speeds did they get up to? caller: i don t have that information in front of me now. hopefully we ll be able to provide a live picture. we re walking up to the scene for the first time. we re getting our first look at it. it s really something.
the map here, it appears that it was taking a curve near the eagle s pride golf course. out of that curve it goes across i-5. that s the picture you are looking at there. you can see the bridge it was crossing. that s where the derailment happened. what we don t know and what ntsb investigators will be looking at very closely is the speed of the train. now, we do know that on that particular part of track it could reach speeds around the 80 mile-an-hour mark. we don t know at what speed it was traveling. we don t know the condition of the engineer at that time. all of those things are things that the ntsb will want to look at very closely. they will also be looking extremely closely at the track because these parts of this track we know we don t know if this was one of those specific new parts, but parts of the track were just upgraded.