After Amtrak
May 12, 2015 · 9:21 PM · Frankford Junction, Philadelphia

245 of uslived.

Amtrak 188 pulled out of Philadelphia at 9:10 and was on its side eleven minutes later. Eight people died. The file is closed, the cause is documented, the case is decided — and none of it describes what happened to the rest of us afterward.

So I'm writing it down. One day at a time, for 365 days.

Read the archive Tell me where you are
50
0
MPH
POSTED LIMIT ON THE CURVE 50
SPEED AT DERAILMENT 106
253Aboard
106MPH in a 50
8Did not survive
11Min out of 30th Street
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It stopped in Philly eleven minutes before.

People picture this train tearing up from Washington. It wasn't. It was standing still at 30th Street with the doors open, and everything that determined whether 253 people lived or died happened in the eleven minutes after it pulled out.

9:06 PM188 arrives at Philadelphia 30th Street Station.
9:10 PMIt departs. Speed limit out of the station is 30 mph, and the train holds near it for the next few miles.
~9:10 PMFive miles south, a SEPTA train is struck by something thrown from beside the track. Its windshield shatters. Its engineer gets on the radio, and ours hears all of it.
9:20 PMAt milepost 83.4 the authorized speed rises to 80. The throttle goes to full — legally. The next sixty seconds are below.
T − 60s
SPEED 78 MPH
60 seconds outDerailment
Out of the station
Ten minutes ago this train was standing at 30th Street with the doors open. 253 people are aboard. I'm in the second car.
Approximate — NTSB event recorder
SPEED vs. POSTED LIMIT
Actual Authorized — 80 on the straight, 50 in the curve
60s outderailment
Interactive · Tap a card to turn it

The record gets written fast. Nobody comes back to correct it.

In 2015 a reporter got four minutes with a man in a bed on a lot of morphine. What ran is what the internet still says. I'm not angry about it — but somebody should fix it, and I'm the only one left who can.

Interactive · Hover or tap any day

365 days of what came after.

One entry a day for a year, in twelve movements. The lit squares are published. The dark ones are days I haven't gotten to yet — and some of them I don't know how to write.

Day 001
Day To Day
The Record · Published
Interactive · Select an injury

What ten seconds costs, eleven years later.

This is the list, and the list is not the point. The point is that it never became past tense.

The part that still matters

The technology that would have stopped it already existed.

Positive train control automatically slows a train that enters a curve too fast. Congress mandated it in 2008. It was not active on that stretch of track in 2015. The NTSB found the derailment would have been prevented if it had been.

2008Rail Safety Improvement Act mandates PTC
MAY 2015Amtrak 188 derails at Frankford Junction
DEC 2020PTC in operation on all 57,536 required route miles
TODAY41 railroads covered, including Amtrak
Five years, seven months between the crash and full implementation. Twelve years between the mandate and the finish line.

It's done now. That's worth saying plainly — this isn't a grievance page. But eight people were inside the gap, and I was too.

Who's writing this

I'm not a speaker. I'm a guy who got on the wrong train.

My name is Lenny Knobbs. I grew up in Kensington. North Catholic, then La Salle for my BA and back to La Salle for my MBA. I'm a chief financial officer.

Before any of that, I lost twelve, maybe fifteen people — to drugs and to gang violence. I don't have an exact count anymore. That's its own fact. I fought almost every day. Not as a story I tell now; it was just the arrangement.

So when people find out about the derailment, they assume it's the worst thing that ever happened to me. I've never known how to answer that.

On May 12, 2015 I got on Amtrak 188 at 30th Street Station. It was the first time I had ever been on an Amtrak train.

I was on it because of parking. I'd driven to New York the month before for the same meetings, and getting the car in and out of the city was enough of a nightmare that I decided I'd never do it that way again. So I took the train. I prepaid a spot at 30th Street and then nearly missed the train because I couldn't find it.

That car sat in the space I'd paid for while I was in a hospital. Somebody had to go and get it days later.

Eleven minutes out of Philadelphia I was on the floor of the second car with the wheels of car one eight inches from my head.

The man sitting next to me didn't get up.

I did. Six broken ribs, both lungs bruised, two fractured vertebrae, a broken tibia, and both knees torn apart. Somewhere around forty surgeries since, including a knee replacement and five operations on the same joint. I still get headaches every day. My back is still my back.

What nobody warns you about is the part that comes after the part everybody asks about. I drank to get out from under the pain, for years, and it never once touched it. I stopped on December 31st, 2024.

I'm a father. That's the part that actually organizes the day. None of the rest of it is the interesting part — the interesting part is that eleven years on, there's a federal accident report, a criminal trial and a $265 million settlement, and not one page of any of it describes what happened to the 245 people who lived.

So I'm writing it down. One entry a day, for a year. No inspirational arc, no lessons I don't have, and when I don't know something I say so.

If you want to reach me rather than the project, write to . I read everything. I'm slow sometimes.

Shop

Nothing in here mentions the crash.

Eight people died on that train. I'm not putting the date, the number, or the curve on a t-shirt. What you can wear is the part that belongs to everybody who's rebuilding from something.

Four lines — sweatshirts, t-shirts, hats and bands — and the ladder starts at ten dollars on purpose. The band exists so that somebody who cannot spend sixty still gets to own the thing, and so there is something you can hand to a person in a waiting room.

STILL HERE
Still Here Hoodie

Heavy fleece · charcoal

$59.95
AFTER AMTRAK
SURVIVE · REBUILD · BECOME
The Wordmark Tee

Heavyweight cotton · black

$39.95
day to day
EST. 2015
Day To Day Cap

Unstructured · washed black

$34.95
STILL HERE
SILICONE · DEBOSSED
Still Here Band

Silicone · debossed

$9.95
Before this goes live: confirm your Amtrak settlement agreement contains no confidentiality or non-disparagement clause that a commercial site built on the derailment would breach. A TikTok account and a storefront are not the same legal object. I'm not a lawyer — have yours read it first.
Write It Down

Nobody wrote it down. Nobody funded it either.

The response to that derailment was enormous — investigators, a criminal trial, a $265 million settlement. What there was almost none of was money for the ordinary, unglamorous things that break in the first year after you live through something.

That's what this is for, and it isn't only about trains. Four funds, two kinds of people, and no requirement that what happened to you was ever in the news. It is a separate organization from After Amtrak, with its own name and its own bank account, because charity money and t-shirt money should never sit in the same place.

Every dollar donated goes to the funds.

Not most of it. Not what's left after administrative costs. All of it.

That works because this organization has almost no overhead to cover. The videos, the website, the software that runs all of it — that's a separate business of mine, and it is paid for out of that business, not out of anything given here. The charity does one thing: move money to people who need it. It has no office, no staff and no marketing budget, and it isn't going to grow one.

You'll be able to check. Every 501(c)(3) files a Form 990 that splits its spending into programs, administration and fundraising, and it is a public document that anyone can pull. If the administrative line ever stops being close to zero, you will be able to see it without being told.

Fund 01

The first ninety days

Rent for the month you can't work. The co-pay. The ride to physical therapy when you're not cleared to drive yet.

Somebody sent me a fruit basket. I couldn't eat solid food. Well-meaning and useful are not the same thing, and the useful version usually costs money nobody wants to talk about.

Fund 02

Treatment, and what comes after

Around forty surgeries since 2015. A knee replacement. Five operations on the same joint. Insurance covered some of it and argued about the rest.

This is for the care that doesn't fit the plan — surgery, physical therapy, prosthetics, the psychiatric treatment nobody codes properly. And for going back to school when the old work isn't possible anymore. I finished an MBA at La Salle in 2023, eight years after. It was the first thing that felt like a future instead of a recovery.

Fund 03

Service dogs

A fully trained service dog runs into the tens of thousands of dollars. Health insurance covers none of it.

It is one of the few interventions where the people who have one will tell you flatly that it changed the shape of their day. This covers placement and training for people who could not otherwise get there.

Fund 04

Service members

A catastrophic injury doesn't care whether it happened on a train, on a job site, or overseas.

Service members and veterans qualify for everything else on this page. This fund exists because the wait can become its own injury — it covers the gap while VA care is pending, and the things it doesn't cover at all. Nothing here duplicates a benefit you've already earned.

Who this is for

People who were catastrophically injured

However it happened. A crash, a job site, an act of violence, combat, a fire. The injury is the qualifier — not the headline it did or didn't make.

People who survived a catastrophic event

You do not have to have been hurt. If you were there, if you got someone out, if you were waiting at the other end and the call came — that counts. Walking away intact is its own kind of afterward, and nobody writes that down either.

You only need to be in one of those two groups. There is no form asking you to prove how bad it was, and there is no requirement that it was a train — Amtrak 188 is where this started, not who it's for.

$
Enter an amount of $1 or more.
Your gift $50 one time
Not open yet — and I'd rather say so than take your money badly
Who's behind it
Founding partners — $1,000 once, or $100 a month
Sustaining — monthly
Contributors

Recognition is opt-in and you can decline it. Nobody's name goes on this page because they gave money — it goes up because they gave money and said yes to being listed. Ask me to take it down and it comes down that day.

The list

One email. Sunday morning.

The entries go out daily on TikTok and Facebook, and I know most people don't want a notification every afternoon for a year. The list is the slower version — one email a week, on Sunday, with what went up and anything I couldn't fit in sixty seconds.

I need a working address to send it to.
 
You're on the list
What you're actually signing up for
  • One email a week. Sunday morning. That's the whole cadence.
  • The week's entries, and the parts that didn't fit in sixty seconds.
  • The monthly call date once we hit ten people.
  • Unsubscribe link in every single email. One click, no survey asking why.
What it isn't
  • Sold, rented, traded or shared with anybody. Ever.
  • A daily notification.
  • A fundraising list. If that ever changes I'll ask you first.
The reason for all of it

Tell me where you are.

If you were on 188, if you were in something else, if you're the person who loves somebody who was — there's a version of this you're living that nobody wrote down either. I read everything. I'm not a therapist and I won't pretend to be one. I'm a guy who's eleven years into it.

Send me your story

Nothing publishes automatically. Every submission comes to me first, and nothing goes on the wall unless you check the box saying it can.

Give me something to call you — initials are fine.
That doesn't look like an email address I can reply to.
Write something first — even one line.
This form is read by one person and it is not monitored overnight.
If tonight is bad, please don't wait on me — call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741.
It came through

The monthly call

One video call a month. Survivors of 188 and of anything else that split a life into before and after. No cost, no curriculum, no cameras required — you can sit with it muted and off.

0 of 10 seats claimed Not yet scheduled

The call runs once ten people have signed up — not before. Three people on a video call about the worst night of their lives isn't a support group, it's an ambush. If we're short, I'll email you the count and you keep your seat until we get there.

This counter shows the real number. It doesn't move when you sign up, because I update it by hand once I've actually confirmed the seat.

I need a working address to send you the call link.
Even just a first name.
Seat requested
WHAT I'M PROMISING, AND WHAT I'M NOT
· I read every message. I answer as many as I can.
· The monthly call happens at ten sign-ups. Never fewer.
· I am not a counselor, a doctor, or a crisis line.
· Nothing you send gets published without your yes.
· If you're in danger tonight, please use the numbers below instead of waiting on me.

If tonight is bad

  • 988Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text, 24/7
  • Text HOME to 741741Crisis Text Line
  • 1-800-662-4357SAMHSA National Helpline — treatment referral, 24/7
  • 988, then press 1Veterans Crisis Line — or text 838255
  • 215-685-6440Philadelphia 24-hour crisis line — DBHIDS
  • 1-888-545-2600Community Behavioral Health — mental health and addiction treatment, Philadelphia
Checking what's wired up…