Novice Wrote:
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> Do trains have "black boxes" or anything serving
> the same purpose?

Yes they do. They are known as event recorders on the railroad. They are used for incident investigation and operation testing of employees. They are not as bomb proof as the airline version. Several recent incidents have damaged the event recorders enough to cause loss of all data.

Railroad event recorders document everything except cab voices. The vast majority of railroads have outword facing cameras now that record sound and video. Most commuter operations have inward facing cameras that watch the crew members. Most class I railroads want inward facing cameras as well.