The Capitol Limited is a daily Amtrak train between Washington, D.C., and Chicago, running 764 miles (1,230 km) via Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Service began in 1981 and was named after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Capitol Limited which ended in 1971 upon the formation of Amtrak. It carries the Amtrak train numbers 29 and 30, which were previously assigned to the discontinued National Limited.
MARC is a commuter rail system in the Washington–Baltimore area. MARC is administered by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) and operated under contract by Alstom and Amtrak on track owned by CSX Transportation (CSXT) and Amtrak. In 2022, the system had a ridership of 2,815,900, or about 12,100 per weekday as of the third quarter of 2023, less than pre-COVID-19 pandemic weekday ridership of 40,000.
Rockville station is an intermodal train station located in downtown Rockville, Maryland, United States. It is served by the Washington Metro Red Line, MARC Brunswick Line commuter trains, and Amtrak Capitol Limited intercity trains.
The Howard Street Tunnel fire was a 60-car CSX Transportation freight train derailment that occurred in the Howard Street Tunnel, a freight through-route tunnel under Howard Street in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 18, 2001. The derailment sparked a chemical fire that raged for five or six days and virtually shut down the downtown area. In the evening of the first day, a water main ruptured causing significant flooding in the streets above. The accident disrupted Northeast Corridor rail service. It also slowed Internet service in the US for several hours due to the destruction of a cable passing through the tunnel.
On September 22, 1993, an Amtrak Sunset Limited passenger train derailed on the CSX Transportation Big Bayou Canot Bridge near Mobile, Alabama, United States. It was caused by displacement of a span and deformation of the rails when a tow of heavy barges collided with the rail bridge eight minutes earlier. Forty-seven people were killed and 103 more were injured. To date, it is the deadliest train wreck in both Amtrak's history and Alabama's railway history. It is also the worst rail disaster in the United States since the 1958 Newark Bay rail accident, in which 48 people died.
On 8 February 1986, twenty-three people were killed in a collision between a Canadian National Railway freight train and a Via Rail passenger train called the Super Continental, including the engine crews of both trains. It was the deadliest rail disaster in Canada since the Dugald accident of 1947, which had thirty-one fatalities, and was not surpassed until the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in 2013, which resulted in 47 deaths.
On January 4, 1987, two trains collided on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor main line near Chase, Maryland, United States, at Gunpow Interlocking. Amtrak train 94, the Colonial, traveling north from Washington, D.C., to Boston, crashed at over 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) into a set of Conrail locomotives running light which had fouled the mainline. Fourteen passengers on the Amtrak train died, as well as the Amtrak engineer and lounge car attendant.
The Metropolitan Subdivision is a railroad line owned and operated by CSX Transportation in the District of Columbia and the U.S. state of Maryland. The 53-mile line runs from Washington, D.C., northwest to Weverton, Maryland, along the former Metropolitan Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
The Brunswick Line is a MARC commuter rail line between Washington, D.C., and Martinsburg, West Virginia, with a branch to Frederick, Maryland. It primarily serves the northern and western suburbs of Washington. The line, MARC's second longest at 74 miles, is operated under contract to MARC by Alstom and runs on CSX-owned track, including the Metropolitan, Old Main Line, and Cumberland subdivisions. It is the successor to commuter services provided by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O), which date to the mid-19th century.
Positive train control (PTC) is a family of automatic train protection systems deployed in the United States. Most of the United States' national rail network mileage has a form of PTC. These systems are generally designed to check that trains are moving safely and to stop them when they are not.
The 2008 Chatsworth train collision occurred at 4:22:23 p.m. PDT on September 12, 2008, when a Union Pacific Railroad freight train and a Metrolink commuter rail train collided head-on in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States.
The 1990 Back Bay, Massachusetts train collision was a collision between an Amtrak passenger train, the Night Owl, and a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Stoughton Line commuter train just outside Back Bay station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the Amtrak train entered a speed-restricted curve at excessive speed, causing the train to derail and crash into the MBTA commuter train on an adjacent track. Although no one was killed in the accident, 453 people were injured and Back Bay station was closed for six days. Total damage was estimated at $14 million. The accident led to new speed restrictions and safety improvements in the vicinity of Back Bay and a revamp of Amtrak's locomotive engineer training program.
The Crozet, Virginia train crash was a railway accident that occurred on January 31, 2018. A chartered Amtrak train named Congressional Special Train 923, following the route normally used by the Amtrak Cardinal and carrying a group of politicians and lawmakers from the Republican Party, collided with a garbage truck at a level crossing at Lanetown Road in Crozet, Virginia, 12 miles (19 km) west of Charlottesville, Virginia. The train was chartered by Republican lawmakers for transportation from Washington Union Station to an annual retreat at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Several politicians brought their spouses and children with them for the trip; no members of the general public were passengers.
On February 4, 2018, the southbound Amtrak Silver Star No. 91 passenger train from New York City to Miami collided with a stationary CSX Transportation freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, just south of the state's capital of Columbia on CSX's Columbia Subdivision. Two Amtrak crew members were killed and 116 other crew and passengers were injured.
The Harvey train collision took place on October 12, 1979, when the Shawnee train operated by Amtrak between Carbondale and Chicago Union Station crashed into a parked Illinois Central Gulf freight train, leading to the death of two crew members.
On June 27, 2022, the Southwest Chief, a passenger train operated by Amtrak, derailed near the small town of Mendon, Missouri. The derailment was caused by the train striking a dump truck that was obstructing the crossing of County Road 113, about three miles (4.8 km) southwest of Mendon. Four people were killed in the wreck: three passengers on board the train and the truck driver, with up to 150 people injured.
The 2002 Placentia train collision occurred at around 8:10 am. PDT on April 23, 2002, when a BNSF Railway freight train and a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on at Control Point Atwood in Placentia, California, United States.
