Learning more about engineer of Amtrak train 188

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Investigators with the NTSB say they have been in contact with the engineer of Amtrak train 188, and say they have agreed to meet in the coming days.

NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said in an interview with CNN, "We do very much look forward to the opportunity to get the engineers firsthand account of what he can tell us."

The engineer, 32-year-old Brandon Bostian, suffered a concussion and several other wounds in the crash that killed eight and wounded 200 others.

Investigators are in the process of attempting to obtain Bostian's cell phone records.

Sumwalt explains, "Not only is it an Amtrak policy to have cell phones off, but it's a federal regulation that cell phones will be off while the employees are on duty. So we will have the capability to determine whether or not he was on the phone, texting or anything like that."

He continued, "We're just collecting facts at this point, we will look at the human, we will look at the machine, we'll look at the environment. So those are things we traditionally will look at. We want to gather information in each of those domains and then slowly start to take things off the table. But for now ... everything is still on the table."

New surveillance video obtained exclusively by Action News shows the train speeding down the tracks right before it derailed Tuesday night.

Moments later, flashes of light.

The NTSB said the train was traveling at 106 miles per hour at the time of the derailment. The speed limit was 50 mph.

Bostian's lawyer, Robert Goggin, says his client doesn't recall anything from the critical moments that led to train 188's derailment.

Goggin says, "He remembers coming into the curve. He remembers attempting to reduce speed thereafter. He was knocked out, thrown around, just like all the other passengers in that train."

He says it's unclear why the train was going almost two times the speed limit at the curve at the time of derailment.

"I can tell you he was distraught when he learned of the devastation... He was distraught," Goggin said.

Bostian, 32, graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a bachelor's degree in business administration and management in 2006. He became an Amtrak engineer in 2010, four years after landing a job as a conductor, according to his LinkedIn profile. He lives in New York City.

Bostian's friend Jason Ksepka tells us, "He was always just a very nice guy. He was always looking to help people and be part of a supportive group and supportive community."

Ksepka went to college at the University of Missouri with Bostian. They have only stayed in touch on Facebook in recent years, but says Bostian was always a compassionate caring guy... far from reckless.

He says becoming a train engineer was Bostian's dream job.

"He would go on vacation and bring back subway maps," Stefanie McGee, a friend in Bostian's hometown of Bartlett, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis. "He would go places with his family, and he would talk about the trains instead of the places."

Will Gust, a college fraternity brother of Bostian's, said he had "nothing but good things to say about Brandon."

"He is a very conscientious person, one of the most upstanding individuals that I know, just a really good-quality person," Gust said.

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Information from The Associated Press was used in the writing of this post.