Amtak Continues to Burn Options

[ICGsteve]

MICRO, N.C. -- An Amtrak train engine caught fire as it traveled through Johnston County Saturday.

NBC TV

JEEZ, is it too much to ask of Amtrak for them to keep their locomotives in a good enough state of repair that they don't keep burning-up while on the road??? Apparently it is.

This post has been edited by ICGsteve: Aug 26 2007, 11:12 AM

[ICGsteve]

We don't hear about fire truck chasing down the train, so I think we know that the train had come to a stop before the fire department was called. The unknown is how long before the call was made did the train crew know that they had a fire, and how long did the train sit before the call was made? I don't buy the argument that the engineer should not be able to stop the train and call the dispatcher at the same time. Cell phone to either Amtrak or 911 might be a problem, I agree.

[AlanB]

We don't hear about fire truck chasing down the train, so I think we know that the train had come to a stop before the fire department was called. The unknown is how long before the call was made did the train crew know that they had a fire, and how long did the train sit before the call was made? I don't buy the argument that the engineer should not be able to stop the train and call the dispatcher at the same time. Cell phone to either Amtrak or 911 might be a problem, I agree.

First we getting everything through the media, which make any info subject to question. The fact that the media noted that someone living alongside the tracks called in the fire, doesn't mean that the engineer didn't call the dispatcher before that bystander did. The breakdown, if there was one, could well have been with the dispatcher trying to find the appropriate number to call and report the fire. And for all we know, maybe the fire department did indeed get a phone call from the dispatcher first. We don't know how accurate the reporter was in his/her investigation. All we know for sure is that someone living alongside the tracks called in a fire. But none of that has anything to do with Amtrak operations knowing that the train was on fire and placing a call to the local fire company.

Second, I wasn't suggesting that the engineer couldn't stop the train and call the dispatcher at the same time. I was simply saying that his first action would be to initiate stopping the train. I had the experience of once riding an Amtrak train into an emergency stop because the engineer thought that he had hit someone. The first thing he did was to hit the emergency stop button. However even as we were still coming to a stop he was on the radio screaming to anyone and everyone that train #449 was in emergency and that he believed that he had hit someone.