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Article snippet: DUPONT, Wash. — A passenger train on a newly opened Amtrak route jumped the tracks on an overpass south of Tacoma on Monday, slamming rail cars into a busy highway, killing at least three people and injuring about 100 others, officials said. The derailment of Amtrak Train No. 501, making the inaugural run of a new service from Seattle to Portland, dropped a 132-ton locomotive in the southbound lanes of the Northwest’s busiest travel corridor, Interstate 5. Two passenger coaches also fell partly in the traffic lanes, and two other coaches were left dangling off the bridge, one of them wedged against a tractor-trailer. On the highway below lay five crumpled cars, two semi trucks and huge chunks of concrete that were ripped away from the damaged overpass. All 12 of the train’s coaches and one of its two engines derailed. The National Transportation Safety Board said at a Monday night briefing that the train had been traveling more than twice the speed limit before it derailed, or at 80 miles per hour instead of the allowable 30 m.p.h. Bella Dinh-Zarr, a member of the safety board, said at the briefing that it was unclear why the train was traveling so fast or whether the operator’s unfamiliarity with the new route had caused the accident. Passengers aboard the train described a terrifying scene. “It felt like the end of the world, and I was standing amid the wreckage,” said Emma Shafer, 20, a modern-dance student who was napping aboard the train with her shoes off w... Link to the full article to read more