Officials have not determined a cause for the derailment, which killed at least seven people and injured another 200, at least six critically, but the National Transportation Safety Board was focusing Wednesday on the train's speed.
The Federal Railroad Administration said the posted speed limit was 70 mph just before the curve and 50 mph on the curve.
The engineer of the seven-car Amtrak Northeast Regional train en route from Washington to New York, whose identity has not been disclosed, survived the accident, but he has refused to talk to police.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said the engineer was injured "to some extent" and received treatment.
Nutter said a search team found the train's black box in the twisted wreckage. It holds key data that could help investigators determine the cause of the derailment, including the train's speed and other technical information.
The black box was taken to Amtrak's operations center in Delaware for examination.
Officials said an unknown number of the 243 passengers and crew aboard the train remained missing or unaccounted for, although some of them may have left the scene uninjured.
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Nutter called the crash scene "an absolute disastrous mess. I've never seen anything like this in my life."
President Barack Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, were "shocked and deeply saddened" by the accident.
"Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of those we lost last night, and to the many passengers who today begin their long road to recovery," he said. "As we work to determine exactly what happened, I commend the fire, police and medical personnel working tirelessly and professionally to save lives.
"Along the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak is a way of life for many," Obama said. "From Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to New York City and Boston, this is a tragedy that touches us all.
" The U.S. Naval Academy said one of its students who was on leave and on his way home was among those killed. The Associated Press said one of its staff members was also killed.
Many stunned and bleeding passengers were able to escape after the crash, while others found themselves trapped until emergency crews were able to cut through the wreckage and pull them to safety.
More than 140 people were transported to nearby hospitals for treatment.
One of the passengers, former U.S. Representative Patrick Murphy of Pennsylvania, said he was sitting in the cafe car when it began to topple, throwing passengers on the left side of the car "completely over to the right side."
Murphy took photos of the wreckage and rescue operations and sent them out via Twitter.
'Like someone had slammed the brake'
An Associated Press manager, Paul Cheung, was on the train and said he was watching Netflix when “the train started to decelerate, like someone had slammed the brake. …
Then suddenly you could see everything starting to shake. You could see people's stuff flying over me.”
Cheung said another passenger urged him to escape from the back of his car, which he did. He said he saw passengers trying to escape through the windows of cars tipped on their sides.
“The front of the train is really mangled,” he said. “It's a complete wreck. The whole thing is like a pile of metal.'”
Gaby Rudy, 18, of Livingston, New Jersey, was headed home from George Washington University when the derailment occurred. She said she was nearly asleep when she suddenly felt the train “fall off the track.”
The next few minutes were filled with broken glass and smoke, said Rudy, who suffered minor injuries. “They told us we had to run away from the train in case another train came."
Another passenger, Daniel Wetrin, was among more than a dozen people taken to a nearby elementary school afterward.
“I think the fact that I walked off [the train] kind of made it even more surreal, because a lot of people didn't walk off,” he said. “I walked off as if, like, I was in a movie.
There were people standing around, people with bloody faces. There were people, chairs, tables mangled about in the compartment ... power cables all buckled down as you stepped off the train.”
The area where Tuesday's accident occurred is not far from the scene of a 1943 derailment of a passenger train that killed 79 people.
That train was also traveling from Washington to New York.
Amtrak, the government-funded national passenger rail service, was offering limited service between Washington and Philadelphia on Wednesday, but it suspended service between Philadelphia and New York.
Coincidental funding considerations
The White House criticized Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives for a plan that would cut grants to Amtrak, part of a transportation funding bill that lawmakers were set to consider Wednesday.
The House spending bill for the coming fiscal year would cut Amtrak grants by $252 million from current levels, said Shaun Donovan, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
"You're looking at more than a 15 percent cut in investments in Amtrak," Donovan told reporters on a conference call, noting Obama had proposed a boost to Amtrak funding to $2.45 billion, up from current levels of $1.4 billion.
Donovan also said the federal investigation into the cause of the derailment was ongoing and could not be linked to funding levels.
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