By the afternoon, federal investigators had begun what they said would be a 7- to 10-day examination of the circumstances that sent all eight cars of a Hudson Line train heading south from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., careering off the tracks at about 7:20 a.m. just north of the Spuyten Duyvil station near where tracks pass under the Henry Hudson Bridge.
A senior city official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the train operator had told emergency medical workers in the aftermath of the crash that the brakes had failed, but that the operator’s account had not been confirmed. At a news conference Sunday evening, Earl F. Weener of the National Transportation Safety Board said its investigators had yet to interview the operator of the train, who was among those injured, or the rest of the train crew.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called the derailment “obviously a very tragic situation.” Saying “safety is Job 1,” he cautioned commuters not to expect an immediate resolution to the disruption. “I think it’s fair to say that tomorrow the people who use this line should plan on a longer commute,” he said.
By 5 p.m., officials had yet to release the names of those killed in the crash. Relatives of at least three of the four people killed — two men and two women — had been notified by the authorities, according to a law enforcement official, who requested anonymity to discuss the progress of the investigation. The official added that none of those critically injured in the crash appeared likely to die.
Three of the people who died had been thrown from the train during the derailment, said Edward S. Kilduff, the New York Fire Department’s chief of department.
Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said that there were about 100 people on the train, and the crash could have been much worse if there had been more passengers.
“On a work day, fully occupied, it would have been a tremendous disaster,” he said.
The transportation authority said that the train was being pushed by a locomotive at the rear, propelling the cars southward, when the head cars derailed. The train operator has been with Metro-North for about 20 years, an agency spokeswoman said, and the train had three conductors in its crew.
The transportation authority said that the train’s “black box” could yield additional information about the crash.
The senior city official said that it appeared that the front cars had flipped after coming off the rails and that on at least one of the cars, all of the windows on one side of the carriage were gone.
The curve where the train derailed had a speed limit of 30 miles per hour, said Mr. Weener, of the safety board. The stretch of track just before the curve has a limit of 70 mph. . He said investigators would examine the track, the equipment, the signal system and the operator.
“Our mission is to not just understand what happened but why it happened with the intent of preventing it form happening again,” Mr. Weener said.
Joel Zaritsky had just fallen asleep in the fourth car of the train when the train started to roll over and landed on its side, he said.
“People were screaming,” he said on Sunday morning as he traveled to the hospital. “I found myself thrown to the other side of the train.”
Mr. Zaritsky, who lives in Poughkeepsie and was heading to New York for a convention, said his hand was cut and he was very bruised.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “I’m very happy to be alive.”
Around 1 p.m., the National Transportation Safety Board said that a team had arrived in New York to investigate the derailment.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 1, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of Ryan Kelly, a passenger on the derailed Metro-North train. It is Kelly, not Ryan.
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