cancel. jon: these cars are very robust liability so that still picture we showed earlier that showed one end of the car still up there, there is the photo, one end of the car still essentially attached to the train and the other dangling down on the tracks you have to imagine that it is similar to a human being jump off that bridge and landing on the concrete below. that s the kind of impact that train car would have had as it hit the highway. yeah, the fortunate thing is the one end stayed connected to the train. otherwise you lose the entire car. that would be much worse. but just looking at the photos it s bad enough. i m praying and hoping for the people on board. they try to handle it the best they can but it may well be out of there i don t think they can handle it on their own. there is a ton of emergency people and that s the fortunate
the service from seattle to portland have never left this early. they left at 6:00 a.m. we were on that train. among the people on board we re a number of rail enthusists and people very interested in being part of what they what would be historic ride. when you were on the train, were the cars filled and what was the experience of the train. was it a smooth ride. tell us what you can recall. reporter: there were several stops along the way. every stop picked up a number of people. there were dozens of people on board the train. it was a smooth ride for the portion we took, a 45 minute ride from seattle to tacoma. the thing they ve been talking about in addition to a new station that they just opened here in tacoma, washington was they have the new upgraded track
amtrak had a ribbon cutting ceremony for this new station in tacoma and touted the new parts and the upgrades to the track and signals in that area. that ribbon cutting just took place on friday and this, as we understand it, was the inaugural run of a train along that new route. so all of those things potentially very significant in what looks like a very bad crash right now. you can see very clearly one of the carriages hanging off the overpass. it is closed down at the moment. we ve seen another picture closer up and that appears to show another one of the train cars completely shattered and on the ground on i-5. we ve heard from the sheriff that there are injuries and in his word casualties. he did not differentiate what he meant by the difference
scene. we just arrived. they are having us move down. we re going to try and walk and talk as best we can. we are on the move but right now i can tell you that we are overlooking the scene where this train derailment took place and i have with me now one person who lives nearby. laura. you ve lived in the area. tell me what did you hear this morning when this all took place? i just woke up and heard a bunch of sirens and noise. it was very, very scary. i m so glad i was off work today. just looking at this whole mess around christmas breaks my heart. i want to have our photo journalist show what we re looking at because it s a shocking site here. the amtrak train 501 that left seattle at 6:01 this morning
allows for automatic braking should there will any sort of train to train collision possible or excessive speed or misaligned track. all of that is supposed to have been avoided with positive train control. it s going to be a high priority for everybody involved. was this upgrading of old track and what kind of equipment? they don t go as fast as they could go. you know better than anyone because the track is so old. how new is this track and how new is the equipment. is it canadian made. to be honest, i don t have