Amtrak Train Detaches At 125 MPH Near Havre de Grace

HAVRE DE GRACE, MD — An Amtrak train uncoupled near Havre de Grace Tuesday morning while traveling more than 100 mph en route to Boston. Nobody was injured in the 125-mph crash, officials said.

Two cars on Acela Express train 2150 broke apart while the train was in motion around 6:40 a.m. Tuesday, an Amtrak spokesman said in a statement. The train was carrying 52 passengers at the time of the uncoupling, which was attributed to a "mechanical issue."

The passengers were transferred to the Northeast Regional Train, which makes more stops than the Acela Express along the route. Nobody aboard the Acela Express was injured, the spokesman said.

The Acela Express 2150 leaves Washington, D.C., at 5 a.m. and ends in Boston by 11:40 a.m. daily. It makes stops in Baltimore; Wilmington, Delaware; Philadelphia; Newark, New Jersey; New York City; Stamford and New Haven, Connecticut; and Providence, Rhode Island. Its route concludes at South Station in Boston.

The uncoupling occurred somewhere between the Aberdeen station and the Susquehanna River Bridge in Harford County, according to The Baltimore Sun, which reported when the train cars stopped there was 5 feet between them.

Amtrak is looking into why the two train cars detached.

"We are currently investigating the cause of the car separation, inspecting every Acela trainset, and taking any necessary actions to prevent a re-occurrence," an Amtrak spokesman said in a statement.

The train detachment comes days after a fatal Amtrak crash near Columbia, South Carolina. An Amtrak passenger train crashed into a freight train there on Sunday, killing two Amtrak workers and leaving more than 100 people hurt, officials said.

A spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board told NBC that it was monitoring Tuesday's incident in Maryland.

While the incident on Tuesday is prompting a different type of investigation, federal officials have been studying the northeast corridor in Maryland for the past several years.

Due to increasing rail traffic, transportation officials have proposed expanding the Susquehanna River Bridge between Havre de Grace and Perryville to alleviate what they say is a bottleneck in the area.

The existing bridge was opened in 1906 and carries more than 100 trains—Amtrak, MARC and freight train—each weekday. Both Amtrak and MARC project that number to double in the next two decades.

The bridge includes two tracks, while much of the northeast corridor is built three or four tracks wide.

With a $22 million federal grant Maryland received for high-speed rail, officials are in the process of studying the options for the future of the bridge.

— By Brendan Krisel and Elizabeth Janney

File photo. Photo Credit: Elizabeth Janney.