Amtrak California Zephyr No. 5 in fatal crash leaving Chicago

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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Metra trains are experiencing heavy delays after an Amtrak train collided with a car in west suburban Berwyn, Illinois on Wednesday afternoon.

The accident occurred on the tracks which run along Windsor Avenue in Berwyn, according to a Metra spokesman, near the Berwyn station on the 6800 block of West Windsor, about seven miles west of Chicago Union Station, where the Amtrak train originated.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office could not confirm reports of two reported fatalities from the accident as of 4:20 p.m. However, evening TV news reports confirmed two deaths – occupants of the vehicle.

Amtrak spokesman Mark Magliari said the No. 5. California Zephyr was westbound from Chicago to San Francisco and had left Chicago at about 1:50 p.m. The vehicle pulled into the train’s path west of Chicago, he said.

There were no reported injuries on the train, which carried about 350 passengers, he said.

Metra Burlington Northern Sante Fe Trains are experiencing some delays. Several were stopped and holding because of the accident on Chicago’s Racetrack, a three-track main.

Officials have opened at least one track for train traffic that is required to operate through the accident at a restricted speed, the update said. Currently, the latest train is running 90 minutes late.

The struck vehicle was so badly mangled, it was impossible to determine its make or model. In the photo (click link for photo, video) the victims had yet to be removed from the vehicle a

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According to the report it was a truck (pickup?) that deliberately drove around the gates. Occupants were in their 20s. Vehicle so badly mangled that it’s hard to identify make and model.

What kind of hurry could they have been for them to take the risk they took…and lost? I’m assuming that the engineer must have been laying on that horn. Now he has to deal with this as well.

Saddening as everyone loses all the way around.

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That train had to be doing over 40 mph at that point (or above perhaps) and it would have taken the train less than 30 seconds to go through the crossing…so these kids couldn’t wait thirty seconds? Very sad, they now have not only missed their date/appointment/meeting/whatever, but everything else in their lives that might have been, simply due to being stupid, very, very stupid.

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Update: Just heard on Chicago radio that one of the people in the car that number five hit had been charged recently with deliberatly attempting to illegally transmit HIV virus by biting a police officer during an altercation. Yet, again, this proves the Amtrak collission due to his driving around the lowered gates was a case of STUPID DOES AS STUPID IS.

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There IS a God.