Second Train Derailment In Japan

(CBS/AP)  Japan is being shaken by two derailments in two days. Tuesday, a passenger train hit a truck at a crossing in Nimori, 50 miles northeast of Tokyo, and then jumped the tracks.

Police say the truck was stuck at the railroad crossing after one of its wheels came off, and the truck driver pulled an emergency alarm to warn the train, but the train was unable to stop in time. It crashed into the truck and then derailed.

The truck driver is reported to have suffered minor injuries.

The crash in Nimori, in Ibaraki Prefecture, came a day after a derailment in Amagasaki - just north of Osaka - which is the worst train accident in Japan in nearly 42 years.

The Japan Railways commuter train jumped the tracks in Amagasaki at 9:18 a.m. Monday and rammed into an apartment complex, killing at least 73 people and injuring at least 440 others, including 137 with broken bones and other serious injuries.

Tuesday, rescuers were finally able to pull out the last survivors from the gnarled wreckage of the train. Police say there are bodies still inside the debris at the crash site, indicating that the death toll of 73 people could go higher.

Investigators focused on excessive speed and a 23-year-old train driver's lack of experience after the crowded commuter train jumped the rails Monday on a curve and plowed into the apartment building just a few yards from the tracks.

Rescuers - including Self-Defense Force soldiers - worked into the night trying to free survivors from twisted rail carriages left when the train hit the nine-story building's parking garage.

Late Monday, rescuers trained floodlights on the damaged cars and administered emergency medical care to three conscious survivors, but were hampered by worries about a gasoline leak. Others were also inside but they were feared dead.

Distraught relatives rushed to hospitals to search lists of the injured and dead. Takamichi Hayashi said his elder brother, 19-year-old Hiroki, had called their mother on a mobile phone from inside one of the train cars just after the crash but remained unaccounted for. He said he had heard Hiroki was among those still inside the wreckage.

The investigation is initially focusing on whether the driver of the train, 23-year-old Ryujiro Takami, who has been on the job less than a year, was speeding. Train drivers in Japan are under intense pressure to get to the stations exactly on time, and this train, reports CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen, was running late.

Takami had overshot the stop line at the last station before the accident.

A month after receiving his license, in May 2004, Takami reportedly made a similar mistake, and was issued a warning at that time.

The tracks do have safety equipment that will slow the trains down even if the driver does not, but in this case the equipment was not working.

The place where the train derailed is one of the oldest tracks in Japan.

The seven-car commuter train was carrying 580 passengers when it derailed, wrecking an automobile in its path before slamming into a nine-story apartment complex just yards away. Two of the five derailed cars were flattened against the wall of the building, and hundreds of rescue workers and police swarmed the wreckage and tended to the injured.

"There was a violent shaking, and the next moment I was thrown to the floor ... and I landed on top of a pile of other people," passenger Tatsuya Akashi told NHK. "I didn't know what happened, and there were many people bleeding."

Japan - home to one of the world's most complex and heavily traveled rail networks - has not had a train accident of this magnitude since 1963, when a three-train crash killed 161 people in Tsurumi, outside Tokyo.

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