Boston-Bound Amtrak Train Detaches At 125 MPH

BOSTON, MA — A pair of cars on an Amtrak train heading to Boston from Washington, D.C. uncoupled Tuesday morning while traveling at 125 miles per hour near Havre de Grace, Maryland, according to reports and Amtrak officials.

The cars on Acela Express train 2150 broke apart while the train was in motion around 6:40 a.m. Monday, an Amtrak spokesman said in a statement. The train was carrying 52 passengers at the time of the "mechanical issue," according to the spokesperson. None of the passengers or crew members on the train were injured.

The train was en route to New York Penn Station at the time of the breakdown, the New York Post first reported. The passengers were transferred from the broken train to a train on the Northeast Regional Line.

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

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

"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 detachment comes days after a fatal Amtrak crash near Columbia, South Carolina. An Amtrak passenger train crashed into a freight train there 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 Tuesday incident 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 options for the future of the bridge.

— By Brendan Krisel and Elizabeth Janney

Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images