While we obviously will wait for the NTSB Final report, there is in the mean time, absolutely nothing wrong in interested persons (such as this forum) exploring the various possibilities. As long as we keep an open mind.

In fact, the first things any accident investigator will do, after preserving the evidence of course, is to search for every hint of probable cause and all likely contributing factors. This is a speculative process at best; and at worst - an educated guessing game as well. But that is OK, because they search hard and usually find multiple probabilities. Besides, that is never the end of it anyway.

Identifying these probabilities then merely points to the direction the investigation must go. Typically, for quite some time, each answered question just creates more questions. But each identified possibility and each new question must be scientifically developed as far as it will go, until their relative probabilities begin to sift out. Those that are still left are then examined more intensely, until one probable cause shines above all the others.

While suspicions of all sorts will occur to them right-away, good accident investigators will never allow themselves to form definitive opinions until very late in that sifting process. In other words - their minds remain open until the evidence becomes compelling.

Unfortunately, sometimes evidence becoming "compelling", is just never going to happen, even after exhaustive and lengthy research - resulting in the need to finally "get off the pot" so to speak. Thus sometimes the NTSB only rules a probability - rather than a definitive cause.


While I have much respect for the field investigators that I occasionally had the opportunity to work with during my career, I do believe there are valid criticisms that the NTSB should be overcome. One of those is that the NTSB is often too slow to come to a conclusion. Another is that lately, certain conclusions have been included in the final reports (at the highest levels), that are plainly unsupportable by any empirical body of evidence extant (PTS comes to mind).


Both these criticisms I believe, are mostly due to the whole process becoming highly politicized, legally cumbersome, prone to the injection of bias and prejudicial misconduct by a number of our more favorite Senators. In other words, it is because of the Pigs we send to Washington. The Senate is especially offensive (has been for decades) at interfering with regulatory processes for their own benefit (via lobbyists) - and that of the special interests they look out for.



In the case at hand, it does seem probable, that human error caused this one. But it cannot just end there! The question then becomes - what led to the human error? Most factors that cause human error are well known. One is willful negligence, but not necessarily by the person making the error. Other well known causes are confusion, lack of experience, fatigue, lack of sufficient attention, involuntary distraction, and on and one. One should take note that humans are not alone here; as machinery also has a well known set of error causes.

What stands out to me is the relative improbability that an accident by any of these causes, even if judged inevitable, would actually happen on the very first revenue trip. To me, it screams to a contributing factor that would directly increase that particular probability. Now what do you suppose that points to?

It screams lack of familiarity with the line. Remembering that these locomotive engineers are for the most part, dedicated professionals, it begs another question still - how improbable is it that a less dedicated or negligent example, just happened to be driving that train on that very special day.

So what could cause dedicated professionals to be less familiar with the line than they needed to be. Well, after looking at dozens of pictures of that line, one possibility comes to mind, is its setting, in the trees - long narrow canyons of trees in V-cuts. Especially in the southbound approach to the accident seen. There being several such similar places along the line, anyone could become confused as to where they are - especially if they are new to the line.

In occurs to me also, that under such adverse conditions, every Amtrak engineer should have been given ample time at the throttle (several trips with a qualified pilot engineer) - perhaps considerably more trips than is usual, considering the high chance of location confusion. Fortunately, the NTSB has announced that they are going to be "Looking very deeply" into this possibility.


Of course practicing such extra intense training with actual deadheading trains will cost money - lots of it!

But then again the alternative is just as predictable - IT WILL COST LIVES !