ron Wrote:
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> I was referring to the train crew that asked the
> dispatcher to stop and inspect the train. I'm not
> sure if that happened or not . I did'nt read the
> entire accident report.It used to be when in doubt
> take the safest course of action.( Stop and
> inspect) It seems in todays railroading you make
> a call and someone five hundred miles away at a
> switchboard instructs you what to do. Had the
> train crew stopped and found nothing dispatchers
> might be very unhappy with that decision.

FWIW, airplane drivers sometimes seem to get into a "call home" loop when "non-normal" situations happen. Many things are in fact drilled into them as "memory items" that immediately trigger descent and landing at the nearest suitable airport. That's how the Southwest flight from PHX to SMF ended up at Yuma after the fuselage cracked. Other things seem to be negotiable, and there might be a discussion on company channels leading to passing over one or more "suitable" airports in favor of one where the company has a maintenance base. Those situations always generate a lot of critical comments at Aviation Herald by people with little experience outside of running a flight simulator in their computer in the basement. The analogy may work for railroad chat board comments as well.

Ultimately, it's always the pilot's decision as the master of the vessel assuming all relevant information and other inputs are considered. True, messing up badly can, if the pilot survives, result in "tea and crumpets with the chief pilot" afterward and some "retraining" if they stay on staff; something similar probably happens when a train derails with major damage when the engineer might have prevented it. Dispatchers and others should not try to (and worse, succeed, if that's what happened here) override action based on engineers' serious concerns.

Of course, stopping the train and inspecting it probably means at least a 4 hour delay for somebody to walk a 2 mile long (if it's that short in these PTC days) train even if nothing wrong is found. The company is naturally going to try to prevent that absent external evidence of a problem (from a detector, for instance). Unfortunately, the derailment in this case tied things up for much more than 4 hours.