Major derailment @ Spuyten Duyvil

I know for a fact that all the people who work for MN feel terrible that such a horrific incident happened and that they have deep sympathy for all those injured and the unfortunate ones who perished.

DutchRailnut wrote:If engineer claims he slept from 20:00 till about 0400 and slept solid we can assume he had a good night sleep.
a lot of things come into play, and a lot of things will be studied, including sleep study, sun angle at approach to wreck site. temperature etc etc etc.
a lot of blanket statements are being made by those who have zero insight in the events.
lets wait till NTSB is done, so far they have very little, and have nothing on the engineer, not even a parking ticket.

So you are allowed to assume and speculate based on leaked reports but want to cut off the conversation as soon as you've had your say?

I understand completely.

If you really want to wait for the NTSB then wait for the NTSB - stop making claims and assumptions and expecting no response. Personally I don't mind talking about the leaked report and "zoning out" in general. But I'm not going to say my piece and then tell others not to discuss the topic.

As you have stated ... we can assume a lot. We can assume that the reports we have heard are truthful and not distorted. But when the first report from the engineer was "I tried to stop" and there is no evidence of any braking before the train broke perhaps we should not be giving credence to a claim of six solid hours of sleep.

for info from 20:00 till 04:00 is 8 hours sleep, second he did not use brake at point it broke apart, he started braking 6 seconds before engine wheels stopped or plus minus 660 feet before curve. yes to late but not as you say.
my reference to assume was facetious, but you did not get that either.

DutchRailnut wrote:for info from 20:00 till 04:00 is 8 hours sleep...

Dutch it seems like every time you bring this up the time he spent asleep gets longer!

Here's what the man's lawyer says:

Chartier said Rockefeller had gotten "a proper amount of sleep," having gone to bed at 8:30 the previous night to wake up at 3:30 a.m. for his shift. He said Rockefeller, before going to bed, had been spending time at home. Link

ok so he had 7 hours sleep still enough .
http://www.mayoclinic.org/how-many-hour ... Q-20057898" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not every one sleeps the same number of hours. Yes, the engineer did sleep only 7 hours. But he did tell investigators he got a good night's sleep. I myself usually slept 5 to 6 hours a night when I was working and 6 to 8 hours on days I was not working.

Clean Cab wrote:I made many overnight trips from NY to Massachusetts (after working 9 to 10 hours) and sometimes I can't recall how I ever got there. It's troubling when you're driving and suddenly you can't remember what happened 10 miles ago.

It sounds like you're describing something different though. The difference here is, you were still functioning as a driver. You didn't go thirty or forty seconds without actively operating your vehicle or you would've been in an accident. Rockefeller apparently did stop functioning for that period of time. Where would an engineer normally begin braking to reduce speed from 70 mph to 30 mph approaching Spuyten Duyvil? Instead of gradually accelerating to 82 mph? That's the minimum amount of time he was unresponsive. Possibly longer, I don't think anyone really knows.

What you're talking about is different I think, more along the lines of a short term memory issue or something. I had an engineer tell me there were trips when he was arriving at Hastings and he could not remember stopping at Greystone. Only he had. He made a completely normal stop and departure. He just didn't retain a conscious memory of it. Rockefeller didn't do that, he didn't make a completely normal approach to Spuyten Duyvil. So I think it's a different issue.

again you assume that Rockefeller did not do that, you have no insight.
the normal braking point is sub station in middle of CP12, at which point its about 1/3 mile to where 30 mph begins.

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I'm not assuming anything. I'm going by the information I have seen. Someone -- possibly here -- said they board at Riverdale station and the southbound express trains normally begin braking as soon as they clear the station area. You're saying it's further south, by the substation. Okay. So the point where he should've begun braking was one-third of a mile from the point where he needs to be at 30 mph? At 80 mph he's going to cover that distance in about 14 seconds. Plus there's a couple seconds time lag between when an engineer begins to brake and when they take effect, right? That puts it in the neighborhood of sixteen seconds. He should've begun braking about sixteen seconds before he got on the curve. During this time he is not only not slowing the train the train is picking up speed.

There is also the testimony that Rockefeller failed to dim his headlight for an opposing train near Riverdale. So that could possibly increase the zone-out time by quite a bit.

Let's just wait for the official report by the NTSB and put an end to all the speculation.

Tommy Meehan wrote: There is also the testimony that Rockefeller failed to dim his headlight for an opposing train near Riverdale. So that could possibly increase the zone-out time by quite a bit.

these days it seems optional to dim headlights a lot of engineers don't, despite what rules say.

DutchRailnut wrote:for info from 20:00 till 04:00 is 8 hours sleep,

An unsubstantiated claim (even adjusted to 8:30p to 3:30a) coming from a person who's first word on the incident has been proven false.

DutchRailnut wrote:second he did not use brake at point it broke apart, he started braking 6 seconds before engine wheels stopped or plus minus 660 feet before curve. yes to late but not as you say.

How many feet before the derailment point was the engine when braking began? The length of the train? Less than the length of the train? "Trying to stop" while not on the rails doesn't count. The train was stopping regardless of the inaction of the engineer.

DutchRailnut wrote:my reference to assume was facetious, but you did not get that either.

If you are having trouble communicating that is on you.

I haven't seen any quotes from Rockefellar, only statements of what he supposedly said.

right, conclusions are drawn on what he first mumbled to responders while in shock and to what has been said in Media.
So far the NTSB has not been forthcoming with info, the NY state police did not arrest him, the Bronx attorney general has not found anything to charge him with.
yet the rail droolers have him quartered and hung.....

What we do know is, FRA has made us put second person in cab at critical points and railroad has corrected a bad signal situation at both DV curve and Jenkins curve (NH).

Dutch, I don't believe us droolers have him drawn and hung. I don't know if there's a difference between a drooler and a foamer, but I definitely consider myself a foamer, and I don't think I've drawn and hung him, but it's reasonable to think, or ASSUME if you will, that he will suffer a not very different fate than what befell Ricky Gates, the engineer who clearly primarily caused the Chase Md Amtrak wreck, or many other people who clearly primarily caused countless other accidents: he probably will never work again as an engineer, and may never work again in railroading.

Maybe he got a proper night's sleep before the wreck, and got proper rest for a long enough time in the prior days that fatigue was not a factor. If he didn't get enough rest, and if fatigue was a factor, I don't see how that lessens his responsibility. From the press I've read, undisputed press as far as I can tell, nothing that Metro North did should have affected his ability to have been fully rested before this his first trip of his 2nd week on this run. If he didn't get enough rest it was his own fault.
I've seen posts that said even the week or more since his prior shift change was not enough to let him adjust his sleep pattern. If that's true then what's the solution, are we supposed to have engineers take 3 weeks or 3 months off anytime they change shifts because clearly they need enough time to avoid the countless accidents we can speculate that sleep deprivation caused?

But what difference does that make? Rested or not, he still was responsible for a fatal accident, and some foamer, drooler, or muck raking reporter saying so does not constitute drawing, hanging, tarring, feathering, or pilloring.