Crescent City, Fla. ? Two Amtrak engineers and a conductor all hit the emergency brakes just seconds before a train derailment that left four people dead and more than 150 injured, investigators said Saturday.

The lead engineer of the Amtrak Auto Train told the National Transportation Safety Board that he saw a disjointed track about an hour into a trip from Sanford to Lorton, Va., and slammed on the engine’s brake.

As the National Transportation Safety Board continues its investigation into the deadly Amtrak train derailment in Crescent City, Fla., railroad workers are removing the Amtrak cars from the site.

Seconds later, a backup engineer in the locomotive cab and a conductor two cars back felt the train hit the disjointed track and switched on emergency brakes as well, NTSB board member George Black said Saturday.

The NTSB hasn’t said if its investigators have been able to verify if the track was misaligned. The lead engineer told the NTSB the tracks were misaligned by about 10 inches, NTSB investigator Russ Quimby said Saturday.

The train’s two engines and first two cars stayed on the tracks, but more than half of the Auto Train’s 40 cars derailed Thursday afternoon, throwing passengers to the floor and against walls. The train was going 56 mph in a 60 mph zone at the time, investigators said.

The four people killed all vacationers and snowbirds returning to the North from Florida were identified as Frank Alfredo, 67, of Waccabuc, N.Y.; Joan DiStefano, 65, of Staten Island, N.Y.; and Joseph Wright, 75, and his wife, Marjorie, 70, of Toronto.

The train’s two engineers were put on temporary administrative leave, a standard procedure in an investigation, Amtrak spokeswoman Kathleen Cantillon said Saturday. She said she didn’t think either played a role in the accident.

“We feel they acted appropriately,” Cantillon said.

The train’s lead engineer had 35 years of experience, Black said.

Thursday’s Auto Train was bound for Washington with 418 passengers and 34 crew members, as well as 200 automobiles stacked in 23 specially designed cars, when it derailed.

The tracks had been visually inspected eight hours earlier and had been in good condition, according to CSX, the freight railroad that owns the track.

Four other trains had passed over the area just before the wreck, including a southbound train carrying coal. A preliminary examination of the coal train and another train showed no problems, but investigators wanted to perform another inspection on the coal train, which passed only six to eight minutes earlier at 35 mph.