Locked track switch blamed in fatal South Carolina Amtrak crash

(Reuters) - A locked track switch was blamed for the collision of an Amtrak passenger train with a freight train that killed two people and injured more than 100 in South Carolina on Sunday, raising questions about the delayed rollout of a system to prevent such crashes. The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said a switch on the tracks, which the freight hauler CSX Corp owns and operates, was padlocked in a position that steered the Amtrak train onto a siding near South Carolina's state capital Columbia, where it crashed into a stationary unoccupied CSX train. Robert Sumwalt, the chairman of the NTSB, told reporters Monday at a press briefing that track signals were inoperative because they were being upgraded for positive train control or PTC, a system designed to prevent derailments or crashes caused by excessive speed.

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