> (George Andrews) I thought the Ricky Gates - Gunpow incident took care of boozers & users on the railroads, but maybe not.

It did. The typical annual rate for random tests for at least the last 10-15 years has been less than 0.1% positive. I seriously doubt this would be true of your truckers (that guy who drove the Hershey's truck in front of the San Joaquin at Mariposa Road was norotrious for stunts like leaving Philly on Monday evening and arriving in LA on Wednesday morning). And don't tell me I'm full of the brown stuff either; I've been on the RR both before and after the effects of Gunpow.

>(John Bruce) Yeah, right, OPRRMS. Random testing's got it covered. I'd be interested to know what you can get at Eighth Street.

For the T&E cres, probably not very much. In every crowd there are the dumb ones, including truckers and armchair experts.

>In other words, failure by an engineer qualified on the route to stop at a red, assuming he had a yellow at the previous signal, is indication of something really, really out of whack. He's asleep, texting, drunk, sick, whatever.

You need to add "[plain old] not paying attention" to your list before it can be considered anywhere near all encompassing.

>Just having a bad day doesn't cut it.

An you NEVER have bad days (fail to notice an octagonal red stop sign, always stop before your wheels touch the first crosswalk line, make a "Massachusettes stop" at a stop light, and so on). I'm not getting equal protection of the law here. You drive on the freeways means you participate in the Nation's transporation system. Thus, you should be subject to random testing too.

>Except that as taxpayers, we're supporting Metrolink and Amtrak.

We're also supproting the FRA, NTSB, and now AIG.

>I'm not sure if the politicians are holding either organization accountable.

"Politician" and "accountable" can't be used in the same declarative sentence without a negative modifier. More than anyone else, politicians need to look in a mirror in this repsect.

> . . . tht Metrolink is covering up by claiming to have made a new rule to fix the Rialto situation.

Make all the rules you want. The question is human frailty in following them. Look at your own driving record and tell me you're postively angelic (NOT!).

>> . . . in a modern locomotive
>> EVERYTHING is run by, or at least THROUGH the
>> computer.

> (OPRMS) I'm sorry, but that's simply not true.

The veracity of the statement actually depends on the locomotive. The P-42s have NYAB/Knorr's EAB, so everything does go through a computer in a P-42. The same is true for freight engines which have EFI and EAB or EPIIC (WABC0). The F-59s and "P-32s" (the 500s) have 30-CDW, which is straight pneumatic. Everything else goes through a computer. The Amtrak 500s still have governors, but these are controlled by a computer rather than directly by the throttle handle like in a GP-9 -- the two CDTX "P-32s" were retrofitted with EFI nearly 10 eyars ago.

>> My
>> scanner picked up the Engineer telling the
>> conductor to " ... tie down some handbrakes before
>> we start rolling back down. "

>I question the reason for this, as the P-42s are equipped with a Locomotive Parking Brake that can be applied by operating a lever located in each cab, whether the engine is running or not.

Armchair experting again. How many P-42s, how many cars, and what was the grade? The independent [air] brakes on two P-42s will hold a 10 car train on a 2% grade /provided/ the train isn't, and doesn't start, moving. I'm not so sure about the parking brakes, because they are only spring applied. Besides, the rules call for [sufficient] handbrakes to be set in situations like this.