Paul Cheung, an Associated Press manager who was on the train, said he felt the train start to decelerate, like someone was stepping on the brake. "Then suddenly you could see everything starting to shake," he said. "You could see people's stuff flying over me."

"All of a sudden it felt like the brakes were hit hard and then our car," Michael Black, another passenger, told NBC Philadelphia. "We were third from the last, just slowly started going over to the side. I tried to just brace my arm against it and then just got off."

Passengers posted photos and video of their escape on social media.

The derailment is the worst accident in the northeast corridor in years. Former Pennsylvania congressman Patrick Murphy, who hosts MSNBC's Taking the Hill, was on the train when it crashed, and Senator Tom Carper of Delaware got off shortly before the derailment.

The tragedy is sure to set off another round of debate about rail safety and infrastructure funding — starting in Congress. Politico reports that the House is set to mark up a fiscal bill on Wednesday that includes funding for Amtrak. A previously approved version of the legislation would "slash Amtrak’s funding to $1.13 billion, less than the roughly $1.4 billion it typically receives annually."

The last time Congress passed an Amtrak bill, as the Washington Post noted, was after a crash in 2008. National Journal published a long report on the woes of Amtrak last month. "Meanwhile," the story notes, after describing the status of our old, slow, and unloved rail system, "the Chinese government — fair comparison or not — will be spending $128 billion this year on rail." 

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest went on CNN this morning and discussed Amtrak funding. "There is clearly more that can be done when we're talking about a railway infrastructure that is decades-old," he said. "If there's an opportunity for us to make further investments in our infrastructure that would better safeguard the traveling public, then those are investments that we should make."

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