On February 22, 2026, at about 11:00 a.m. near Memphis, Tennessee, an Illinois Central Railroad Company (IC) freight train struck a stationary Amtrak passenger train on the same track.
The freight train consisted of two locomotives and 82 railcars. The Amtrak train had one locomotive and seven passenger cars, carrying 118 passengers and seven Amtrak employees. During a switching operation, the freight train was shoving north at about 10 mph when it struck the Amtrak locomotive.
So far, that sounds like a relatively low-speed railroad collision. But the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary investigation contains a much stranger second act.
The IC crew told investigators that they interpreted the resistance from the first collision as resistance caused by an air-brake problem. They pulled forward, reversed again, and about three minutes after the first impact, struck the same Amtrak locomotive a second time.
Two Amtrak employees and two passengers suffered minor injuries. Fortunately, the accident did not become a major disaster. But it left an obvious question behind: how does a train hit another train once, then come back and hit it again?