Sad case of foam in the wrong place. A very high price to pay.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090303/ap_ ... _collision\

and here I thought this was going to be a discussion about boiler treatments.

While the guy undoubtedly had a serious texting problem, and the cab rides were uncool... I remain skeptical.

The conductor claimed he laid the Mark 1 eyeball on the Topanga home signal, and the signal was green. I could write that off as post-accident butt-covering. But 2-3 passengers had first stepped forward and said they observed the signal as green.

This conductor had previously reported the engineer for personal cellphone use, and believed his manager had done nothing; so it seems to me he'd be concerned with the engineer's attention span. The engineer had called out the advance approach on the radio, so both had a hint they might be approaching a stop at Topanga. The rules said the conductor should mention the stop signal ahead. Yet, at the end of the station stop, this skeptical conductor said nothing but "Highball". Hrmmm.

Just so I understand, is that a known fact that the conductor gave the engineer a radio highball to leave the station just ahead of the crash? I assume that would be a routine practice, but I did not hear confirmation that it actually happened. Question: Is it certain that the conductor did not give a visual signal to the engineer as he looked back?

I understand that the final signal was visible to the engineer while standing at the station. If so, I assume it would probably have been visible to the conductor as well if he looked out.

If I am not mistaken, it has been established that neither the conductor nor the engineer called out that final signal, which was required by the rules.

That is interesting because the conductor’s highball signal and the aspect of the wayside signal seem potentially overlapping in a way that they could conflict with each other. The term, “highball,” has a wider connotation than just, “it’s OK to leave the station.” In the broadest sense, it means everything is OK to go or keep going.

So if a conductor did not look to see the red signal, and gave the engineer a highball meaning only that the station work has been completed and it is therefore OK to leave; and the engineer took the conductor’s highball to also confirm a clear aspect of the wayside signal; then, in effect, the engineer would have received two conflicting signals (assuming that the wayside signal was red).

I am not saying that this did happen, or that it excused the engineer if it did happen. If it did happen, however, it might explain why an engineer with his vision focused on texting would have proceeded without checking to see the aspect of the wayside after getting a highball from the conductor.