The Harlem line train reached Valhalla, N.Y., around 6:30 p.m., rolling beside a cemetery.
Riders had settled into the relative calm of their Tuesday evening commutes on the Metro-North Railroad — texting, reading, listening to music. Chris Gross sat in the front car, watching a Mel Brooks movie.
Nearby, on Commerce Street, a line of cars had clustered at the crossing gate for the tracks, a fit of traffic that owed to an earlier crash on the Taconic State Parkway.
At the front of the line was a woman who, for reasons still unclear to the authorities and witnesses, had ended up on the wrong side of the gate in her Mercedes sport-utility vehicle.
The train operator, seeing the obstruction in front of him, apparently applied the emergency brakes.
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And so, the most trying exercise, identifying the six deceased, stretched well into Wednesday. By the morning, most of the bodies had still not been definitively identified. Officials said they had been charred beyond recognition.
Administrators at the hospital expressed astonishment that the toll not been even more severe. But the grimmest arithmetic remained.
“I would have rather had six more patients,” said Dr. Ivan Miller, medical director of the emergency department at Westchester Medical Center.
Reporting was contributed by Lisa W. Foderaro, Marc Santora, Tatiana Schlossberg and John Surico.
