Some were dozing when the train rounded a bend near where tracks pass under the Henry Hudson Bridge. Some were listening to music on headphones. Suddenly, with a jerk that disrupted the steady train’s steady rhythm, their world turned upside down as they were hurled from one side to the other.
In the chaos of screeching metal and the shower of debris as the train kept plowing along, some passengers grabbed for the luggage racks and held on. Others hugged their seats as the eight cars of the train flew off the tracks and several landed on their sides.
“I’m thinking I’m going into the water,” said Eddie Russell, 48, who had been listening with his eyes closed to LL Cool J. “I was thinking of me, surviving.”
Police and transit officials said four people on board were killed and more than 60 were injured, 11 critically. Three of the four dead were thrown from the train after the windows blew out, the officials said.
It was not clear how fast the Metro-North train was going. But an official from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said the train operator had reported that the train was going into the turn too fast and that he had performed an emergency braking maneuver.
The operator told the first rescuers to reach the scene that he had “dumped” the brakes, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Dumping the brakes, railroad experts said, is a last-resort move that has the effect of slamming on the emergency brakes on all the cars of a train at once. It is usually done to avert a collision with another train or a vehicle at a grade-level crossing.
Officials opened an investigation but cautioned that it would take time to piece together the evidence and identify a possible cause. The National Transportation Safety Board sent investigators to the site with instructions to inspect the overturned cars and interpret information from the train’s “event recorders,” devices that are somewhat similar to the flight recorders on airplanes. The Federal Railroad Administration also dispatched a team of investigators.
Earl F. Weener of the transportation safety board said at a morning news conference with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that investigators had yet to interview the operator of the train, who was among those injured. A spokeswoman for Metro-North said the engineer, identified as William Rockefeller of Germantown, N.Y., had about 14 years’ experience with the line. There were also three conductors on the train.
“Our mission is to not just understand what happened but why it happened, with the intent of preventing it from happening again,” Mr. Weener said.
The accident was the latest episode in a trying year for Metro-North, the nation’s second-largest commuter railroad, and the first with passenger fatalities in Metro-North’s 30-year history.
In May, two Metro-North trains slammed into each other near Fairfield, Conn., during the evening rush. Scores of passengers were hurt, five critically.
And in July, a CSX freight train derailed near where the Metro-North train left the tracks on Sunday. Officials said there was no connection between the accidents.
By Sunday night, the transportation safety board had given Metro-North clearance to begin removing the crippled train and repairing the tracks. But the crash was likely to disrupt the Monday commute for thousands of passengers on the railroad’s Hudson line. Metro-North arranged for buses to take Hudson line passengers to White Plains, N.Y., on Sunday to catch trains on a different line that was running normally. On Monday, Hudson line trains will be running as far south as Yonkers, where passengers will be able to catch buses to the 242nd Street station of the No. 1 train.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 1, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of Ryan Kelly, a passenger on the derailed Metro-North train. It is Kelly, not Ryan.
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