A SEPTA Norristown High Speed Line train ran into an unoccupied train early Tuesday inside the 69th Street Transportation Center in Upper Darby, injuring 42 people, officials said.
None of the injuries appear to be life threatening, SEPTA said. The train's operator was treated at Penn Presbyterian Hospital and released.
The train was carrying 41 passengers and the operator when the crash occurred about 12:15 a.m., said Heather Redfern, a SEPTA spokeswoman. The National Transportation Safety Board took over the investigation Tuesday morning, said Eric Weiss, a spokesman for the federal agency. A lead investigator was at the scene Tuesday morning, and a 10-member team was traveling from Washington, D.C., to assist.
The operator is a member of the United Transportation Union Local 1594. Waverly Harris, the local's president, said he did not have enough information to comment on the crash Tuesday morning.
Upper Darby emergency officials mobilized for a mass casualty incident after the call came in for the crash, responding immediately with about 20 ambulances. The injured were taken to eight area hospitals.
High Speed Line trains were operating between Norristown and Upper Darby on Tuesday morning, running about every 20 minutes with no express service, SEPTA said. The 13.4-mile High Speed Line moves about 11,000 people each work day, according to SEPTA route statistics, between 69th Street and Norristown. The 26 cars on the route's fleet went into service in 1993 and 1994, SEPTA reported.
A man who said he was a passenger on the train and identified himself only as Ronnie from Havertown told YC News and other reporters at the scene that the train overshot the Gulph Mills and Bryn Mawr Stations and had to back up. Ronnie said he believed the problem was the brakes and not the operator.
At least one rider voiced apprehension about riding on the line following the crash.
"Scared. Just a little bit," said Tyeisha Bagwell, 27, of Frankford. "Because I got to take this train every day."
The High Speed Line, like the El and Broad Street Line, is equipped with Automatic Train Control, a system that establishes safe braking distances, a SEPTA spokesman said. It was not clear Tuesday whether ATC should have been able to prevent the collision from happening. ATC controls speeds less precisely than Positive Train Control, the braking system that would have prevented the 2015 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia and which is now in place on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and on much of SEPTA's Regional Rail routes. PTC is federally mandated for certain classes of passenger rail, but not the Norristown High Speed Line, or the city's two subway lines.
The 69th Street Terminal was the scene of another crash in February. In that incident, a SEPTA Market-Frankford Line derailed in a rail yard when it crashed into a stopped train, seriously injuring one of the operators. An NTSB investigation into that incident is still ongoing, and the train's operator has retired, according to a union representative.
Despite its name, the Norristown High Speed Line, like the PATCO High Speed Line in New Jersey, is not a European- or Japanese-style "fast train." Its electrified light rail trains operate on a 13.4 mile right of way with 22 stations. The line's express trains take 26 minutes to cover the distance while making stops at 17 stations.
Staff writers David Lee Preston and Erin McCarthy contributed to this report.
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