Joplin Amtrak derailment report renews calls for automated detectors

JOSH FUNK and SAM METZ

Associated Press

Federal investigators renewed their recommendation that major freight railroads equip every locomotive with the kind of autonomous sensors that could have caught the track flaws that caused a fatal 2021 Amtrak derailment near Joplin in northern Montana.

But installing the sensors on the tens of thousands of locomotives in the fleet could be cost prohibitive, and it’s not entirely clear if one would have caught the combination of rail flaws that the National Transportation Safety Board said caused the crash near Joplin, Montana, that killed three people a...