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Reply to "Deaths, injuries reported after Amtrak, CSX trains collide in South Carolina"

Hot Water posted:
Steims posted:

Transportation disasters typically are never caused by a single event.  The systems we have tend to involve and element of human error and mechanical/electrical failures.  This event sure sounds like a dispatcher threw the switch

How do you know it was a "power switch", controlled by a Dispatcher?

not knowing the Amtrak was southbound and then the (known) signal failures failed to warn the Amtrak what was ahead. 

How do you know it was a "signal failure"?

 I suspect the Amtrak engineer started braking as soon as he saw the switch thrown but there was not enough distance to stop. 

Thoughts and prayers go out. 

 

The siding is very long which looks like a passing siding to me.  Zooming in on Google at each switch I see a metal enclosure/controls equipment. 

This "signal failure" was based on what was already reported.  Maybe signal outage would have been a better choice of words. 

"Typically, an automatic signal would have warned that the switch was in the wrong position, instructing the engineer to slow down. However, a crew had recently been working on the system in that area, and it may have been shut off when the incident occurred, the source said."

 

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