5:53 a.m.
That's when life returned to normal on the Northeast Corridor, or at least the stretch between Philadelphia and New York City.
Six days after a horrific derailment that claimed eight lives and injured more than 200, Amtrak resumed service on the busiest stretch of rail in the world.
An Amtrak train just rumbled through the curve at Frankford Junction at 6:25 a.m., accompanied by a throng of media and overhead cameras capturing every move.
Clearly the train this morning was going much slower than the ill-fated Train 188 that was going more than 100 mph as it approached the curve.
There was something else different this morning.
Amtrak has installed the Positive Train Control software on the stretch, which gives the ability to slow down a train that is going too fast, overriding the engineer of some kind of mechanical error.
That system was not in place last week.
It was supposed to be in place across all passenger and freight rail lines by the end of the year.
It's a hell of a price to pay for not getting installed in time.
We still don't know why Train 188 was going that fast.
We do know it took a horrible toll to get those safety features installed on the train.
Maybe we should be asking why on that question as well.
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