Ouch! Thankfully I don't think anyone was hurt, and damage is likely minimal, but that has to be as embarrassing as can be.

Wonder what the actual investigation will reveal?

Aw crap!

Well, for starters, the signal was set at "Stop"!

Read the comments. They refer to a situation that, to put it into American rail jargon, allows a loco under the equivalent of "yard limits" to pass such signals upon orders from a signal box operator, to, for example, run around a train. The British jargon is "SPAD," which stands for "Signal Passed at Danger," typically as a human-error mistake (whether it has grave consequences or is just an "oops").

Somebody--more likely at least three people--made a mistake or several here. A crew running tender-first might not be able to see the catchpoints. The signalman may have thrown a lever, and the linkage failed. There may have been a misunderstanding. This is for the railway's management and any relevant safety agencies over there to deal with, not us in YouTubeLand.

and the guy taking the video didn't say anything?

Maybe he thought it was the 10:00AM catch point demonstration.

What was the guy going to say? He was at least 100-200 feet away from what I could see. That's even assuming he even noticed the points were off, looks to me like he was just trying to get video of movement. I'd doubt if I would have noticed either if I was trying to get my shot lined up.
I think it’s safe to assume this crew will never be allowed to run anything here again after this? Any word on the damages after the locomotive was inspected? Was the coach damaged as well?

I would presume that they would face disciplinary action, if for no other reason than not checking the alignment of the catch points, even if everything else was done correctly.

However, to say that they'll never run anything again seems rather harsh. Accidents happen, even to the best crews, and while this was a serious incident it may not be career ending. On the mainline, crews often carry "derail insurance" through the union for incidents like this, and the resulting "unpaid vacation" time they suddenly have available.

It appears, at a glance, they were working to get the train started, and probably distracted by that. Once the derailment started, it seemed to take a long time to get things stopped but they had a lot of weight behind them.

I hope you're right, Bob, but I've seen a crew blacklisted (and the hogger told never to even come back as a paying rider) for something a lot less damaging and public as this, many years back. But in that case, it was a volunteer crew. Does this operation have paid train crews?

Lee, I'm sure there are managers out there who would fire the lot of them. Hopefully they've never made any mistakes in their career. Must be nice to be perfect.

I don't know any specifics of this operation, their rules, or policies, so I can't comment on the crew's pay status.

I'd say the chances of getting fired and "banned for life" would be greater on a volunteer operation than they would be on an operation with paid crews. Operations with paid staff are more likely to have policies and procedures in place for such situations. (I said more likely, not "always"...)

While this certainly wasn't a small thing, I'm aware that some operations do terminate folks for seemingly minor offenses. Apparently they have an endless supply of skilled volunteers just waiting for a spot to open.

Sh*t happens. I was involved with something like this when I worked for the CTA, and I wasn't even Operating Dept. We were re-decking the northbound platform at the old Howard terminal, and had a flagman set up south of the platform to keep trains off us until we could get clear. Sometime during a very loooong day, two trains showed up simultaneously... as I recall, a Howard-Englewood train, and a single car Evanston shuttle making it's pull-back. The flagman blew his horn, and I signaled him to let them come. He let the Evanston car go.

Unfortunately, the route was lined for the subway train. The Evanston car bumbled down between the platforms and ran a switch. I watched him do it in disbelief, but wasn't in a position where he could see me, so I couldn't stop him. Luckily, the car didn't derail, but the switch ended up under the middle of the car, and the interlockers had to unbolt the throwbar to free the points rather than risk derailing the second truck.

The motorman claimed I had signaled him to come ahead. Hey, man, I just signaled the flagman. He's operating department, he should have read the route and let the proper train go. You're operating department, you should not have moved if you didn't have the line-up.

Meanwhile, the supervisor went up to the tower to interview the towerman, and found him higher than a kite. So, even though he didn't actually do anything to cause the accident, they blamed it all on him.

> The motorman claimed I had signaled him to come ahead.

I had just the opposite problem with the Waterfront Streetcar in Seattle. We were troubleshooting a tongue and mate switch. I was there, with operating Supervisors, and directed a motorman to proceed. Nothing. Tried again, with a bit more emphasis. No movement.

Realizing what was going on, I told him "I'll take responsibility if you derail..." Only then did he proceed. What was obvious to me, if not him, was that "derailing" on a tongue and mate switch in pavement simply meant climbing up the point and falling off the back side, still in the flangeway. Even if he actually managed to derail, it was in pavement and the cars were so light no damage would be done.

Earlier that day, one of the operators discovered that you could run the streetcar down that section of the street with one truck in the short passing siding and the other truck still on the main. Made it the whole way through, no damage done and still on the rails. However, they were of the opinion that when the passing siding was occupied by another car it wasn't going to work out quite so nicely, so I got the call to adjust the notoriously fussy switch.

Wow, it's just the opposite in aviation.
Flight 3701. Couple of young ding-dong pilots are dead-heading a regional jet. They try flying it like a fighter jet. Then they decide to join the mythical "410 club" by flying their airplane at 41,000 feet. Same thing as happened to Icarus: they climb too fast, don't build airspeed, put it at alphamax to try to keep the altitude, end up stalling about 10 times. Grossly incompetent airmanship. Eventually they compressor-stall both engines. They had the altitude to glide to six airports, but they squander the altitude trying to restart the engines (in hopes of covering up the incident to save their jobs). Even then, they fall short of the book-required conditions needed to start a healthy engine, not knowing they'd cooked their engines by abusing them. Anyway, the NTSB all but ignored the broken attitude in the cockpit, and laser-focused on why abused engines don't restart.

Sounds like you relying on second hand info rather than reading the actual NTSB investigation report. Your version has a bit of "urban legend" feel to the conclusions.

Here's the actual NTSB finding: Probable Cause #1: "the pilots’ unprofessional behavior, deviation from standard
operating procedures, and poor airmanship... inadequate training... failure to prepare for an emergency landing... etc, etc " Sounds like they're putting the blame squarely on the pilot's shoulder's to me.

Mechanical problems with the engines were listed as a "contributing factor", after 3 sentences basically saying "They screwed up, then they screwed up, then they screwed up again..."



The full report can be found here:
http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/reports/2007/aar0701.pdf