Amtrak 5 incident near Reno NV (CZ California Zephyr)

I have to say I will be furious if the media turns this into Amtrak's fault and ignores the trucker who drove into the train.

I believe the manifest is just everyone who bought a ticket. I've never seen anyone comparing ticket stubs to the manifest.

As information: the manifest does not carry the name of every single passenger on board. Names are listed for sleepers, mobility impaired, lower level, and so on. But as for plain old coach passengers, it's all just numbers.

Conductors know their responsibility of keeping an accurate record and count of the number aboard the train. There are many "home made" record keeping devices out there, such as forms that someone made up at one point and then xeroxed for others to use. These forms are usually unique to each train and/or crewbase and may take the form of a simple list, matrix/table, or whatever else. In the case of LD trains, when the train is handed over to the next Conductor, he usually takes the numbers off of the previous form and puts them onto his own, and so on.

The manifest is only good as of the date and time it was actually printed. It may very well go out of date before a train even leaves its initial terminal, due to last minute bookings/cancellations. Updated manifests can be provided at any station with an agent on duty, but at times, those can be many hours apart. As a result, to many crews the manifest is mostly seen as a planning device (how many people and where to put them?) as opposed to a record-keeping device.

Now, when enroute changes to the manifest happen, the Conductor is technically supposed to inform someone with ARROW access, so that such changes can be entered into the national system. Such changes might include: bad orders; sleeper rooms swapped for convenience or by request; additional passengers show up at a station unexpectedly, but are allowed on the train since there is enough room; and many other situations. Even with the advent of railroad supplied cell phones, getting these changes put into Arrow is a time consuming process, and there are many areas where cell phone reception is not available. So a Conductor has to keep a running tab of the changes and then report a bunch of them at once.

Before cell phones, these kinds of things used to be accomplished by little paper forms, which were dropped off at the next staffed station, and any instructions that the Conductor wrote down would be carried out by the agent. Either way, it's an imperfect system, since there is a length of time - which can be pretty sizable - during which Arrow's account of a train's passenger load may differ from the actual (Conductor's) account of same. The only thing to fall back on is a particular Conductor's own paper records.

As I understand it, regarding the incident of #5(22), those very paper records were burned in the fire.

Here is the document, "uncovered" by the Sacramento media outlet, in its entirety relating to Crescent City and passenger accountability. For ready reference, the Executive Summary adequately addresses the issue:

http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/Research/ord0506.pdf

If there ever were an incident at which it would be difficult to assess fault against Amtrak, it has to be Trinity. It appears that parties attempting to assess blame against Amtrak are overlooking that some passengers could well have walked away from the incident, and quite unhurt. They seem to hold that after an aircraft incident, involving a hull loss, that everyone ends up accounted for - ususlly deceased.

However, but recognizing that I have no documentation at hand to support, I'd dare say that aircraft incidents in which the hull has maintained integrity, somewhere passengers have gone unaccounted.

All told, until the NTSB releases the Railroad Accident Report (RAR); cheap shot (IMHO).

Can't they just look at the ticket stubs or were they destroyed in the ensuing fire or was there a recent stop without all tickets collected?

obienick wrote:Can't they just look at the ticket stubs or were they destroyed in the ensuing fire or was there a recent stop without all tickets collected?

Even then, what if a passenger got off at a station BEFORE his ticketed destination? Sometimes a ticket is cheaper to a major terminal than to stop along the way. For example, I once was traveling from Atlantic City to Metropark ( Back in the day that Amtrak served AC) the ticket agent found out that a round trip ticket between Newark and ACY was cheaper than MET to ACY, so I was ticketed NWK-ACY-NWK instead of MET-ACY-MET. There also were times when I traveled to Washington, DC on a train that continued on south of Washington. I would book a ticket to Arlington, Va so I could use the dining car and get a more comfortable coach seat (They limited access to that part of the train to persons traveling beyond Washington) . If they used the manifest if something happened between where I got off and where I was ticketed for, I would be presumed missing. That is the difference between air travel and train travel. You can't just get off of the plane in mid air and get off early (although jumping off a moving train is not advised either, but the train makes many more stops along the way than an airplane).

The conductor was one of the deaths. Without being gory, the records she had carried could have been damaged.
TAN: There was an airplane accident at Boston's Logan airport where the nose of an airplane including the 1st row of seats fell into the harbor while the rest of the plane stayed on the end of the runway with the passengers. The crew must have been rescued, as the airline claimed that according to the manifest, no one had died, those 2 seats had been empty, and the survivor who thought she saw someone fall out must have been wrong. Someone asked that the waters be searched for their missing relatives, a couple who allegedly had told them that they were taking that flight. The airplane company convinced the authorities not to bother, as another check of the records showed that no ticket had been sold. A couple of weeks later, a credit card bill arrived at their house with a charge from that airline on the date of the crash, processed just before the plane tried to take off. That's when a successful search was finally started for their bodies. The airline had taken their money and put them on the plane without issuing a ticket or revising the manifest!

1982's World Airways Flight 30 from New Jersey to Boston. All true except for it being a successful search. The two gentlemen were never found. That is one of Boston's many mysteries. Many theories floated around (no pun intended) including that the missing two floated out to sea, never were on board and disappeared elsewhere, were involved in an insurance scam, etc. If any of you watch Globe Trekker with Justine Shapiro, she was a survivor on board.

What would have caused the fire in the coaches? Was it the diesel fuel from the truck? I didn't think that diesl fuel was flammable like gasonline. What caused the ignition? If I throw a lit match on diesel fuel it would just extinguish. How is it different when it hits the side of a train? Did the victims die from the impact of the truck or did they burn to death? That would be a horrible way to go.

The diesel fuel was the cause of the fire, but unlike gasoline this wasn't a case of explosive fireballs incinerating people. Diesel fuel will burn well when soaked in some other "wick" like substance (wood, brush, cloth, foam, etc) From reports of the witnesses the truck hit the train then was pulled alongside until the train came to a stop. Due to a hot engine and a fertile ground autoignition the truck caught fire and then the burning truck lit up the transdorm it was pinned to. After some amount of time (2-5) minutes the dorm became completely engaged with its own combustibles fueling it. 10-15 minutes later the next coach caught fire and burned in a similar fashion. Most of the dead appear to have been killed by the impact outright, or incapacitated and then killed by the smoke/flames. Any pure smoke related deaths would likely be in the transdorm which caught fire first.

Think of diesel fuel acting about the same as a vegetable oil fire. If you pour vegetable oil onto a very hot surface combined with debris it will first start to smoke and vaporize and then auto-ignite. Once it gets going it will burn very hot, hot enough to set the interior of an adjacent railcar with broken windows on fire as well.

Last year if you will recall, a diner "burned up" as a result of a faulty coffee maker. The damage was extensive.

Now couple diesel fuel to mix (fuel rather than electrical/heat) and you can see how easily these cars can be damaged by fire alone.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/r ... ?4,2093203

http://railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=68162

"Not my fault", says the trucking company.

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110729/NEW ... on-Pacific

IJohn Davis Trucking Company, facing five lawsuits after one of its drivers slammed into an Amtrak train last month, killing six, has countersued Amtrak and Union Pacific, claiming the rail companies failed to maintain a safe railroad crossing at the site of the fiery crash.

As I recall reading, quite distinctly, Amtrak indemnifies the railroads. Temporarily ignore the merits of this countersuit for one moment. Even though it's obvious that it's UP that's responsible for maintaining the RR crossing, in the event they'll end up being held responsible (again, setting aside the merits for the moment), it will be Amtrak paying up. They're boned either way.

With that out of the way -- there's no reason to be indignant over this latest development. This was an expected legal maneuver. Specious arguments are a natural part of the way our legal process works.

Because the civil (and criminal for that matter) legal system in the USA is a complete joke.

A truck driver kills 6 people by driving negligently and it's ATK's fault. Rediculous.

I understand the frustration with the way this situation is playing out, but our legal system is only a complete joke until you compare it to the other system out there. In some countries, the truck driver, truck manager, and truck CEO would've already been "tried", then taken out back and shot. What if (for the sake of argument only) we found out the truck driver had an enemy who cut his brake lines, and the only way to find out would've been a US-style trial? I don't for a minute think we'll find that out, but our legal system guarantees you're innocent until proven guilty, and I don't think any of us want that to change.

That said, yes, it appears this is a standard procedure BS countersuit that is an attempt by the trucking company's insurance company to throw a roadblock at Amtrak and UP.

This is good news! It means there is, in fact, an insurance company capable of spending money on this case, which means they're also capable of compensating the victims and Amtrak for losses. That sure beats the heck out of finding out this guy was insured by a fly-by-night minimum coverage outfit.

carajul wrote:Because the civil (and criminal for that matter) legal system in the USA is a complete joke.

A truck driver kills 6 people by driving negligently and it's ATK's fault. Rediculous.

Really? You have all the facts in hand?

Seriously. As Tadman says, the legal system at times seems like a joke, but I'll take it over most other options out there. It at least has a process for attempting to arrive at the truth other than pure speculation.

Heck, for all we know, the train could have been speeding (I have been on a train, the SWC in fact, that basically got "pulled over" for speeding by the conductor.)

Let's get the facts out first and then debate the jokes.

I wonder if the trucking company involved in the recent Maine crash will do the same thing...