Jeff Trainer was at work Monday when he saw the incoming call from an unknown cell number. Something made him answer.
On the line was his wife, Eileen Trainer, telling him Amtrak Cascades train 501 had derailed. Trainer, an Amtrak employee, was working in the galley, training another employee. There were no others in the car as it jumped the track near DuPont.
"She felt like she was in a movie," said Jeff Trainer, relaying his wife's description of the derailment, which caused multiple deaths and injuries. "She says she went from 79 miles an hour to zero in an instant and she bounced all over the service car."
Eileen Trainer, who had multiple lacerations, helped the other woman get out of the closet, which had offered some protection for her co-worker. The woman bandaged Trainer's wounds, and the two climbed out the back of the rail car to a chaotic scene.
The derailment caused some train cars to splay across the tracks. Others dangled precariously from the overpass above southbound Interstate 5. Trainer's rail car landed in a wooded area, her husband said.
"She called me five minutes after the train derailed and told me she was pretty badly scraped up and injured. I only got to talk to her for a few minutes," he said. "I heard a lot of commotion in the background."
Jeff Trainer, a teacher and coach at Olympic High School, hurried home and turned on the news. He got a call from another stranger's phone at 8:15 a.m. It was Eileen again, telling him she would be taken to Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, one of several hospitals that treated the injured. At least three fatalities have been confirmed.
With southbound I-5 closed, Jeff Trainer hopped in the car and struck out for the back route to Olympia via Shelton and Highway 101.
"Had I not heard from her, I would have been very concerned about her safety," Trainer said.
Eileen Trainer has worked for Amtrak for more than 15 years, about 10 of them on the Amtrak Cascades route between Seattle and Eugene, Oregon.
"She loves her job," Jeff Trainer said. "She likes that she gets to get out of town for a night or two. She gets to meet different people. She likes being on the road and always meeting new people."
"It's definitely something she loves doing, and she loves her Amtrak family for sure," said her sister, Lillyann Johnson.
Louis King of Manchester, a retired Amtrak employee, spent the morning tracking down word of the five crew members aboard the train. "I'm going to call them my family. You see these people more than you do your own family," King said. "The Amtrak family is probably the hardest working people that I know of."
King, who has worked with Trainer, said he knows the engineer and conductor well. He declined to share their names and said he was surprised to learn of the derailment. "I call them very professional, very knowledgeable and qualified for both positions. It's awful strange how this thing happened," he said.
The National Transporation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the derailment. The train was making an inaugural run on a high-speed service route.
King, who mostly worked Amtrak’s Empire Builder route to Chicago, has been involved in three derailments. “When you’re in one of these, it just puts the fear of God into you,” King said. “You just hope everybody’s OK because it’s real traumatic.”
Eileen Trainer suffered a deep laceration on her left leg, two puncture wounds on her right leg, all requiring stitches, as well as a laceration on her lower back and a broken tailbone.
Jeff Trainer said Eileen is shaken up but OK.
“There’s lots of tears,” he said. “I’ll say she’s in pretty good spirits considering everything. So I’m happy about that.”
