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A Rush To Judgement?
Author: Holly Gibson
Date: 02-15-2009 - 22:38
OPRRMS wrote:
In Chatsworth, the train received an Advance Approach, an Approach, made its station stop, then passed the Stop signal.
I still have my doubts that the signal at CP Topanga was red. It could have been a false clear. There are four witnesses, including the train's conductor, who claim that the signal was green. Besides the conductor, there was a witness who spends a lot of time at the Chatsworth station and understands how railroad signals work. He frequently directs passengers to the correct station platforms by viewing the signals and piecing together which trains will be on which tracks. You can see the signal at CP Topanga from the Chatsworth station platform. It's quite a distance, but you can see it. One of the reasons why there may have been no radio chatter between the engineer and the conductor regarding what type of signal was displayed at CP Topanga may have been because both employees looked up the track and observed a green. If the conductor observed a green signal at CP Topanga, he would have had no need to "challenge" the engineer as to what color the signal was displaying. That might explain why that conductor has since returned to work and no disciplinary action has been advanced toward him.
However, it sounds as if the NTSB is discounting the recollections of these witnesses and concluding that all four of them were "mistaken."
The Warren Commission did the same thing when they were interviewing witnesses to the JFK shooting at Dealy Plaza. All of the witnesses who claimed there were gunshots coming from locations other than the Texas School Book Depository were, in the opinion of the Warren Commission, "mistaken."
How many more witnesses would have had to take the stand with similar testimony before the Warren Commission would start to change their opinion? A dozen? Two dozen? A hundred?
In Chatsworth, the train received an Advance Approach, an Approach, made its station stop, then passed the Stop signal.
I still have my doubts that the signal at CP Topanga was red. It could have been a false clear. There are four witnesses, including the train's conductor, who claim that the signal was green. Besides the conductor, there was a witness who spends a lot of time at the Chatsworth station and understands how railroad signals work. He frequently directs passengers to the correct station platforms by viewing the signals and piecing together which trains will be on which tracks. You can see the signal at CP Topanga from the Chatsworth station platform. It's quite a distance, but you can see it. One of the reasons why there may have been no radio chatter between the engineer and the conductor regarding what type of signal was displayed at CP Topanga may have been because both employees looked up the track and observed a green. If the conductor observed a green signal at CP Topanga, he would have had no need to "challenge" the engineer as to what color the signal was displaying. That might explain why that conductor has since returned to work and no disciplinary action has been advanced toward him.
However, it sounds as if the NTSB is discounting the recollections of these witnesses and concluding that all four of them were "mistaken."
The Warren Commission did the same thing when they were interviewing witnesses to the JFK shooting at Dealy Plaza. All of the witnesses who claimed there were gunshots coming from locations other than the Texas School Book Depository were, in the opinion of the Warren Commission, "mistaken."
How many more witnesses would have had to take the stand with similar testimony before the Warren Commission would start to change their opinion? A dozen? Two dozen? A hundred?
