Go to Germany or Japan or France or even England and tell me how often you hear about locomotive fires on the road there. It does not happen, it should never happen. I will cheer lead for Amtrak when and if they ever start doing things well. Maybe they can't without more money, but stuff like this makes me wonder. Locomotive fires point to systemic maintenance procedure problems, very basic maintenance in fact. I don't see how this is a money problem. This looks like a management or incompetence of the front lines (in the shops) problem.
Hmm, actually I think it's quite easy to see how this could be a money problem. Now I'm not suggesting that it is, or that the scenario I'm about to describe is true, but it could well explain how something like this could happen.
Let's pretend that one locomotive mechanic can check 8 locomotives during one 8 hour shift for problems, lube, and little general things. The base needs to service 24 locomotives during that 8 hour shift. Originally Amtrak employed 4 mechanics, however now due to budget cuts they only have 3 on duty during that 8 hour shift. There are still 24 locomotives that need to be checked out, but now one of two things must happen. Either 8 hit the road without any inspection at all, or all 24 get an inspection that is shorter than the necessary 1 hour. And neither choice is a good one.
Now yes we could argue for hours that management should have found another way to cut the money out of the budget, but even then the odds are that something else would have needed to slip. Maybe the parts that the mechanics needed.
Is it also possible that the fires are because some mechanic didn't do his job? Sure, I must admit that. We do see it every where in our society, workers who don't do their job and still want to collect a pay check. But most Amtrak workers are at least doing their jobs. Yes, maybe they could be a bit more excited or take one extra step sometimes to avoid a problem. But I don't believe that the bulk of the people who work at Amtrak are lazy or uncaring.
Finally in closing let me also mention one other thing. Don't try to compare US trains to those in Europe. Yes, there are many things that they do excel at over the pond. But just because you don't hear about problems, doesn't mean that there aren't. There is a well respected man who posts to two other train boards that I watch. The gentleman a US citizen has spent the bulk of his adult life overseas helping many different countries build their RR systems. He has mentioned many, many times that almost all the overseas RR's make considerable efforts to sweep their problems under the carpet.
Bottom line here being that they too have problems, they just don't talk about them and the press unlike here in the US doesn't go digging for every little bad story that they can find. Many in our press like to go bashing Amtrak, since that seems to be the political climate over here. Over seas RR's are just common place and accepted.