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ATTLEBORO - A 37-year-old woman was killed Saturday afternoon when she was struck by a New York-bound Amtrak train, the latest in a grim string of railroad tragedies in the area.

MBTA Transit Police Sgt. Brian Carey said Amtrak train 165 struck the woman as it came through the South Attleboro commuter rail station at 3:35 p.m.

The train was traveling 50 to 60 mph as it passed through the station, Carey said.

Police said they believe the woman was standing alone on the train platform shortly before she was hit. The train, which has limited stops between Boston and New York, does not stop in Attleboro or South Attleboro.

Attleboro Police Chief Richard Pierce said personal belongings of the woman, including a pocketbook, were found on the platform. A pocketbook and a carry-on piece of luggage were taken by police to assist them in identifying the victim. Carey said a preliminary identification might be made as early as today, but didn't think an official identification would be made before Monday.

Shortly after the call went out that a person had been hit on the tracks, police and firefighters swarmed the area of the South Attleboro train station, and blocked off access to the area.

Attleboro police prevented traffic from entering the area of the station where the woman had been struck, which included the access road from Newport Avenue (Route 1A) into the nearby shopping center.

Traffic from South Attleboro, vehicles traveling South, on Newport Avenue, were not allowed access into the shopping center.

The 200 passengers on the Amtrak train were kept warm and comfortable, according to Carey, while waiting for a second train to arrive in order to continue their trip to New York. The passengers were moved to the second train around 5:45 p.m. and continued their trip shortly after that. No one on the train was injured.

Police officials from Attleboro, the MBTA Transit Police, Amtrak Police and State Police troopers assigned to the Bristol County District Attorney's office all took part in the investigation.

Amtrak train 165 was scheduled to depart South Station in Boston at 3 p.m., and after traveling through Attleboro, its next scheduled stop was in Providence at 3:50 p.m.

The train, according to Amtrak's schedule, travels from Boston and is

usually scheduled to arrived at it final destination of Washington, D.C., at 11:20 p.m. It was unclear Saturday night how late the train was running to its destinations.

A cleaning crew from Clean Harbors, an environmental cleaning company was called to the scene. Officials said they clean the train and the tracks. The tracks were expected to be in full operation by 8 p.m., once the cleanup was concluded. The last train incident in Attleboro was last May when a man escaped death by inches when he was caught between a speeding Acela train and a fence at the Attleboro station. The man suffered a serious arm injury.

The last area train track fatality was in November when a Mansfield grandmother was struck by an Acela train at the Mansfield station.

The victim was the third person to die on Mansfield train tracks within the past year. In September, a 21-year-old Mansfield woman was killed by a commuter train. And last January, a 15-year-old Easton boy was killed by an Acela train at the Mansfield station.

There have been at least a half-dozen fatalities on train tracks in Mansfield since 1991.

Christmas Eve, a homeless man walking on railroad tracks near the Mansfield station clung to a chain-link fence for dear life to keep from being sucked beneath the high-speed Acela train.