Worn and poorly-maintained prepare tracks that ought to have been changed brought on the 2021 derailment of an Amtrak prepare in Montana that killed three folks and injured 49 others, federal investigators mentioned Thursday.

The derailment occurred on Sept. 25, 2021, close to Joplin, about 150 miles northeast of Helena, Mont. The accident despatched the prepare’s eight passenger vehicles careening off the BNSF Railway, with 4 toppling onto their sides, forcing rescuers to extricate passengers.

The crash may have been prevented if federal rules that required changing the rail — which was worn down, misaligned and would transfer up and down with the prepare’s weight — had been adopted and if a rail inspector had not been so overworked that he had had time to correctly assess the observe, in accordance with a report by the National Transportation Safety Board​.

“The track inspector’s workload likely prevented him from performing a timely walking inspection of the track in the area of the derailment,” investigators mentioned within the report, noting that BNSF Railway Company, the freight railroad that owned and maintained the tracks, had not correctly managed worker workloads.

According to the report, the inspector tasked with checking that specific piece of observe had often been working greater than 13 hours a day within the two weeks main as much as the crash; within the 4 days earlier than, he had labored greater than 57 hours.

The inspector had additionally raised issues in regards to the portion of observe in query, and simply two days earlier than the crash, he had pushed previous the positioning however didn’t get out of his automobile to view it on foot, the report mentioned. “The most likely reason that the track inspector did not perform a walking inspection of the derailment curve in about a year is that he did not have time,” federal investigators mentioned, noting that the positioning had final been inspected on foot within the fall of 2020.

Passengers within the derailment had been so badly injured as a result of they’d not been restrained correctly within the prepare vehicles and since they had been ejected by means of home windows, the report discovered, including that greater requirements had been wanted to make sure that home windows didn’t fall out of their frames throughout an accident. Investigators additionally beneficial that the Federal Railroad Administration analysis methods to mitigate passenger accidents in derailments, probably by putting in seatbelts.

Several wrongful-death lawsuits in opposition to Amtrak and BNSF have been filed within the derailment.

BNSF Railway mentioned that whereas it had not but absolutely reviewed the findings of the report, it was “committed to safety” throughout its rail community and often performed inspections of locomotives, observe, rail and bridges.

“BNSF inspections meet all federal requirements, and we are committed to timely maintenance, repair and replacement whenever issues or potential issues are detected,” Lena Kent, a spokeswoman for the rail community, mentioned in an e-mail. She added that earlier than the report was launched, the rail operator had begun putting in observe inspection expertise on locomotives and that greater than 4,000 detectors had been put in on rail tracks to gather and disseminate info to assist “optimize the safety and reliability of our network and equipment.”

Representatives for Amtrak didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Thursday.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the N.T.S.B., implored observe house owners to make sure that inspectors had the time, help and sources wanted to do their work. “This tragedy is a powerful reminder that there’s no substitute for robust track inspection practices,” Ms. Homendy mentioned in a press release.

Michael Levenson contributed reporting.