Early reports indicate that a construction vehicle, likely a dump truck of some sort, tried to beat the train and failed.
We were just discussing this at the VR Flagstaff camera. The Southwest Chief for both directions scheduled to depart tomorrow have been cancelled.
The WaPo story features a Twitter link, apparently from one of the passengers on the Southwest Chief, with a couple of photos showing a number of the train’s cars on their sides. Pretty frightening, and I’m concerned about injuries or fatalities.
Indeed, and way more serious than what I pictured when I saw “derailed” in the headline.
Not so much upset as concerned for all aboard her. Like @DesertDog I am a Virtual Railfan (V/R) watcher and often see the Chief at it’s stops in LaPlata, MO and Ft. Madison, IA. It’s one of the routes I haven’t taken yet, but hope to someday.
The Chief has Superliner cars, so most folks would have been on the second (about 10-11’ above the tracks) so I expect there to be quite a few broken bones and concussions. Hopefully nothing more serious than that.
From what I can see, the train could well have been near max speed (around 90Mph) and there is no way they could have stopped for a truck on the tracks. Don’t know about the truck driver or the engineers, who would have been at the brunt of the collision.
Will keep checking for more info.
I understand that the injured are being taken to University Hospital in Columbia, which indicates that they were closer to the middle of the state than I initially thought. It’s a good hospital. I hope not many people need it though.
The pictures I’ve seen show virtually every car off the tracks and on its side. I haven’t seen images of the engines yet. I haven’t heard anything about the truck driver yet.
Amtrak hit a car on the tracks a few miles from me yesterday and 3 died. People try to beat the train and many lose. 
This story, from the Fox affiliate in Kansas City, quotes Amtrak as stating that the train had 243 passengers and 12 crew members on board at the time of the collision.
While appearing at an event in Kansas City this afternoon, Missouri governor Mike Parson mentioned that there might be fatalities.
It looks like the article was updated just a few minutes after you posted. Now it says “Multiple people have been killed…” which I take to mean the fatalities have been confirmed. It doesn’t say who, but I wonder if one of them is dump truck driver. One picture I saw showed an axle from the truck just sitting near the tracks completely separate from the rest of the truck. It must have been quite an impact.
That would seem likely. Both the Fox story, and a breaking-news story on the Kansas City Star, are saying multiple fatalities, and at least 50 injured.
University Hospital is indeed a fine facility with a first-class trauma department, but it’s more than 60 miles by air from the crash scene. Good luck to all.
I’m so sorry to learn there were fatalities and so many injuries. Last Tuesday the train I was to board in Tacoma hit an SUV that tried to beat the train just south of Seattle. It was over two hours late getting into Tacoma. The woman I sat next to was on aboard when it hit and said the crash was very loud, and the train crew was obviously upset. I always feel so sorry for the engineer in these cases. What a horrible feeling to know you can’t possibly stop in time to avoid hitting the vehicle.
It never occurred to me the train could have derailed. Is it the size of the vehicle on the tracks that determines whether the train will derail, or are there other factors?
CNN says that it hit a dump truck at an uncontrolled crossing
Latest reports are saying three dead, one in the truck and two on the train.
I also follow VR at La Plata. I knew SOMETHING was going on when I signed onto You Tube and this video had 900 viewers! Unless Amtrak #3 or #4 is boarding (this train was #4, westbound) there’s maybe 100 online.
There are also small hospitals in nearby Macon and Moberly where they may be taking less severely injured people. I’m going to add that if anyone looks at news photos and thinks they may see Amish people, they are; there are sizable Amish and Mennonite communities in northern Missouri, and they use Amtrak extensively.
KCTV5 coverage
I suspect that a major factor is how quickly the collision causes the locomotive (and the rest of the train) to decelerate. In this case, it may be that the locomotive directly t-boned the dump truck, and if that’s what happened, then the combination of the weight of the truck and the fact that it was blocking the tracks caused the locomotive to decelerate rapidly. The train cars, behind the locomotive, would have been going the same speed as the locomotive, and being blocked from continuing to go forward at the same speed, would likely get forced off the tracks by their momentum.
OTOH, if the train were going slower, and/or the collision was more of a side-swipe, or just catching one end or the other of the truck (or if the vehicle on the tracks was a lighter car), the resulting effect on the passenger cars would probably have not been as violent.
A good friend of mine was on the Southwest Chief westbound just a few days ago. Would this have been the exact same train?
The Southwest Chief runs every day, departing from Chicago, as well as running every day, departing from Los Angeles. As the scheduled run takes over 36 hours each way, there are probably four separate “trainsets” operating as the Southwest Chief.
Southwest Chief, yes, but eastbound (#4) as opposed to westbound (#3).