The Amtrak train making the first-ever run along a faster new route hurtled off the overpass Monday near Tacoma and spilled some... (Associated Press) 
 
 DUPONT, Wash. (AP) — Federal officials confirmed an Amtrak train was hurtling 50 mph over the speed limit when it careened off an overpass south of Seattle, spilling cars onto the highway below and killing at least three people. Kimberly Reason with Sound Transit, the Seattle-area transit agency that owns the tracks, said speed signs are posted 2 miles (3 kilometers) before the speed zone changes and just before the speed zone approaching the curve. The 14.5-mile corridor is now equipped for positive train control equipment, but the train controls aren’t operating yet in that area, said Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson. Bella Dinh-Zarr, a National Transportation Safety Board member, said at a Monday night news conference that information from the event data recorder in the rear locomotive showed the train was traveling at 80 mph in a 30 mph zone when it derailed at 7:34 a.m. Mangled train cars ended up on top of each other - and one hung precariously over the freeway. We've got cars everywhere and down onto the highway," he tells the dispatcher, who asks if everyone is OK. 
 
 Aleksander Kristiansen, a 24-year-old exchange student at the University of Washington from Copenhagen, was going to Portland to visit the city for the day. A website that monitors locations and speeds of Amtrak trains, transitdocs.com, reported that the train was going about 81 mph shortly before the derailment, The Associated Press reported.
– The Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state Monday morning, killing at least three people, was speeding, officials say, and not by a trivial amount: The train was going 80mph in a zone where the limit was 30mph when it came off the tracks on an overpass between Tacoma and Olympia, spilling cars onto Interstate 5, National Transportation Safety Board member Bella Dinh-Zarr said Monday night. She said it was "too early to tell" why the train, which was making its first run on a new route, was going so fast, the AP reports. Washington state transportation department spokeswoman Barbara LaBoe says the train was supposed to slow down dramatically as it entered the curve, and speed-limit warnings were posted two miles ahead of the zone as well as just before it, reports the Seattle Times. Amtrak President Richard Anderson says positive train control, a system that can slow down speeding trains, was not in use on the stretch of track where the accident occurred. More than 70 people were injured in the crash, at least 10 of them seriously, authorities say. It's not clear yet whether the three people killed were motorists or people from the train, which carried 80 passengers, five crew members, and a technician, the Oregonian reports. State police say 19 uninjured people from the train were reunited with their families. President Trump tweeted that the accident showed why his infrastructure plan "must be approved quickly," though the New York Times notes that the accident happened on brand new tracks that were part of a state-funded infrastructure investment program.