Three cars on an Amtrak passenger train derailed near the Savannah, Ga., station Wednesday night, according to a railroad spokesman. There were no reports of injuries.

The Silver Meteor train traveling from Miami to New York was backing up at slow speed into the Savannah station around 10 p.m. ET when a baggage car and two sleeper cars derailed, said Jason Abrams of Amtrak. The cars remained upright.

WTOC-TV in Savannah reported the train derailed about 1,000 yards short of the train station on Seaboard Coastline Drive.

Southside Fire EMS officials told WTOC there were 311 passengers on board the train.

Emergency responders were seen hauling their gear through the snow and 23-degree temperature to reach the stranded passengers.

Passenger Joel Potischman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he boarded the train shortly after 9 a.m. ET in Delray Beach, Fla., headed home to New York.

Along the way, winter storm weather affected the tracks and as the train approached the Savannah station, an announcement was made that a switch was frozen, Potischman told the AJC.

“The goal was to overshoot it and back in to the platform,” he said.

The switch instead opened, causing the cars at the back of the train to derail, Potischman told the newspaper.

“Things are calm,” he said. “We’re in the car; they’ve not made any announcements about evacuating.

The Silver Meteor line runs daily between Miami and New York, according to Amtrak’s website.

Abrams said the train is expected to continue north with some of the sleeping car passengers being transferred to another train.

In December, three people died and dozens were injured when 13 train cars jumped the tracks during the Amtrak Cascades inaugural run along a new bypass route. The train carried 85 passengers and crew members.

The crash south of Seattle occurred on tracks where equipment for automatic braking, which Congress has required on all railroads by the end of 2018, was installed but was still being tested.

courtesy= usatoday.com