By JON HURDLE, JAD MOUAWAD and RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

The Amtrak train that derailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, killing at least seven people, was traveling at a speed of at least 100 miles an hour, twice the speed limit on that stretch of track, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The train’s speed was recorded in the so-called black box data recorders that were recovered from the wreckage, according to officials with knowledge of the investigation, while emergency crews searched for more survivors and victims of a wreck that injured more than 200 people.

The recorders were taken to Amtrak’s operations center in Delaware to download information like the train’s speed, images from a video camera on the engine and a log of when the train’s operator used tools like the brake, throttle and horn, officials said at a news conference.

Passengers who emerged battered and bloodied described a chaotic, terrifying scene, with people thrown against walls, furniture and each other, and luggage and other loose items flying through the air and hitting people.

The wreck occurred as the New York-bound train made a sharp left turn at a rail yard called Frankford Junction, northeast of downtown, where multiple freight and passenger routes converge, and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor makes one of its sharpest turns.

The speed limit on that curve is 50 miles an hour, according to the Federal Railroad Administration, and on either side of the curve it is 70 m.p.h. That area, in the Port Richmond section of the city, does not have a safety system called Positive Train Control that can, among other features, automatically reduce the speed of a train that is going too fast.

Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia, at a news conference, refuted reports that the engineer who was driving the train had refused to speak to investigators. “The engineer was injured, received medical care, and was interviewed by the Philadelphia Police Department,” he said.

“It is an absolute disastrous mess,” Mr. Nutter said of the scene. “Never seen anything like this in my life.”

He confirmed reports that the death toll had reached seven, with more than 200 people injured, and said that for now, the focus of emergency crews combing through the twisted wreck was “making sure that we are searching every car, every inch, thousands of square feet, to find individuals that may have been on the train.”

“We are heartbroken at what has happened here,” he said. “We have not experienced anything like it in modern times.”

By midday, the names of the victims began to trickle out. The United States Naval Academy confirmed that one of its midshipmen was among the dead, and family members identified him as Justin Zemser of Rockaway Beach, in Queens, a former student body president at Channel View High School.

“We’re not ready to talk yet. We are just grieving, and when we are ready we will be in touch,” said a relative, who did not want to be identified.

The Associated Press said that one of its employees, Jim Gaines, 48, a video software architect who lived in Plainsboro, N.J., was also killed.

Another victim was Rachel Jacobs, chief executive officer of ApprenNet, an education technology company in Philadelphia, whose co-workers spent most of the day Wednesday unsure of what had happened to her. A friend, Michelle Kedem, said she had received a text message from Ms. Jacobs’s family confirming her death.

Mr. Nutter said some passengers have not yet been found, but officials were still not sure how many. “We have not completely matched the manifest that we received from Amtrak with the patient or hospital records,” he said.

People trying to find loved ones congregated first at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, then at a temporary aid station the city set up at an elementary school, and finally at the Marriott Hotel downtown, where Amtrak opened a family center.

Philadelphia’s director of emergency management, Samantha Phillips, said, “Our hospitals treated over 200 patients last night and this morning.”

The train, Northeast Regional Train 188, from Washington to New York,was pulled by an ACS-64 electric locomotive built by Siemens, a model first put into service last year that is capable of speeds up to 125 miles per hour.

It jumped the tracks at about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, tossing around the passengers and crew, as most of the train’s seven passenger cars tumbled onto their sides and crumpled. One car was particularly badly mangled, looking like nothing so much as a crushed and torn soda can. One car struck a steel utility pole, and a stretch of bent and twisted track could be seen near the wreckage, indicating the sheer force of the crash.

Passengers described a quiet ride turned suddenly chaotic and terrifying.

“The guy next to me was unconscious, so I just kind of picked him up and slapped him in the face and said ‘Hey buddy, get up, get up,’ and he came to,” said Patrick J. Murphy, a former congressman from Pennsylvania, who was on the train.

The engine pulling the train separated from the passenger cars, left the tracks, rumbled through a dirt area and came to rest diagonally across other sets of tracks.

After the crash, emergency workers carrying flashlights and ladders moved frantically from car to car helping passengers off the train, some bloodied, others dazed. Parts of the damaged cars were so badly mangled that firefighters had to use hydraulic tools to rescue people trapped inside.

Amtrak reported that 238 passengers and five crew members were supposed to be on the train, but officials cautioned that those figures were inexact; off-duty Amtrak employees could have been aboard without appearing on passenger manifests, and people who bought tickets might have missed the train.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board began to arrive before 5 a.m., said Robert Sumwalt, a board member, adding that they may be able to release more information on Wednesday afternoon. The F.B.I. was also investigating.

On Wednesday, a giant crane moved into position and began attempting to lift the damaged cars. The wreck severed Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, one of the nation’s busiest rail routes, and the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s commuter train line from Philadelphia to Trenton, stranding thousands of passengers and threatening to snarl travel for days or weeks to come.

Temple University Hospital received 54 patients from the wreck, including one who died overnight from a massive chest injury, Herbert E. Cushing, the chief medical officer, said Wednesday morning. He said that most of the patients suffered fractures from being thrown around the train, and that 25 remained in the hospital, including eight people in critical condition.

“There were lots of people from all around the world” among the injured, he said, including patients from Albania, India and Spain.

About 20 minutes before the crash, on the same line but a few miles away, “an unknown projectile” struck a SEPTA commuter train and damaged a window, an authority spokeswoman said. Mr. Nutter said that had “nothing to do with this incident.”

Amtrak service continued between Philadelphia and Washington on a modified schedule, but no trains were able to run between Philadelphia and New York.

The derailment took place in roughly the same area of track that was the site of one of the nation’s deadliest rail accidents. On Labor Day in 1943, a 16-car Pennsylvania Railroad Congressional Limited train carrying military service members on leave derailed near the same curve, killing 79 people and injuring 117.

Officials concluded that a hot journal box had burned off and caused an axle to snap, which sent the train catapulting off the track.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/us/amtrak-train-derails-crash-philadelphia.html?_r=0