John Bruce Wrote:
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> The one issue I'm puzzled about is you said the
> conductor might not have been aware of the BNSF
> freight on the siding. As a railfan, anyhow, if
> I'm on a passenger train that's passing a freight,
> first I hear loud diesel engines from the
> freight's power, then the noise of the moving
> freight, as well as the noise of the passenger
> train echoed back from the freight. This is if I
> don't notice the freight visually! This was a 100
> plus car train moving into the siding. The
> Metrolink must have passed its power maybe a
> minute before it reached the CP. How could this
> have escaped the conductor's notice?

Some people are simply oblivious to their surroundings, or aren't able to put two-plus-two together.

> I assume that, even without pulling the emergency
> cord, the conductor could have/should have
> contacted the engineer by radio when he realized
> he wasn't slowing to 40 after the yellow and told
> him to slow down.

I would have.

> I'm intrigued by the theories about why the crew
> didn't call the red. They "discussed" it, though!
> Ha! My guess is they discussed let's not call
> the red, because this situation is clearly turning
> to crap, and if we don't call the red, at least we
> have a couple more options in what our story is
> going to be!

Hard to say.

Last month there was an incident between an Amtrak train and a Tri-Rail commuter train, where the Amtrak train apparently failed to stop where required, then backed up. Seems that the crews of both trains and Tri-Rail's management would've just covered it up. Didn't work out that way, however.

So in this instance, had the Metrolink train simply passed the Red at CP Lilac but was able to stop before striking the Kaiser Turn (remember, there's something on the order of 120 feet between the signal and the fouling point) would we have ever heard about it?