[CaliforniaMama]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

The we-said-they-said is well underway: <snip> This looks like a job for .... CAPTAIN HINDSIGHT!

Mr Lambert says fire crews told a company dispatcher what they did at the time, but says there was no discussion of the brakes.

"We were there for the train fire. As for the inspection of the train after the fact, that was up to them," he said.

Sounds reasonable to me.

It is not immediately clear what the dispatcher did after speaking with the fire service.

Mr Burkhardt says the fire service should have also tried to contact the train's operator, who was staying at a nearby hotel.

"If the engine was shut off, someone should have made a report to the local railroad about that," he said.

Didn't they attempt to do that when they contacted the dispatcher?

Plus, earlier it says:

Ed Burkhardt, the chairman of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, says the engine had been left on by the train's engineer to maintain pressure in the air brakes.

He says as the pressure gradually "leaked off", the air brakes failed and the train began to slide downhill.

That implies that the engineer knew about the fire and knew that the firefighters turned the engine off since it clearly says the engineer left the engine on. He must have turned it back on after the firefighters were finished, right?

Sounds like the engineer was trying to follow protocol.

From the information presented here, I say the engineer is at fault for not inspecting the engine and making sure that the problem was fixed since the operation of the engine was vital to the operation of the brakes. He knows the machine better than anyone and he knew there had been a fire from some type of problem with a fuel or oil line leak.

It was up to him to fully inspect and make sure his engine was safe for operation. If that fuel or oil line leaked again, it may have caused the engine to be unable to maintain the pressure in the brakes . . .

Although, it could be a case of the company not keeping their equipment up-to-date and in good working order because they wanted the bottom line to look good at all times.