After reading this, my first thought was that the crew was put in a precarious situation with this train. Brake trouble, on the descending grade, 178 cars, around 17000 tons, loads and empties mixed throughout the train and no rear end helpers.
Maybe if an experienced Road Foreman was on scene, the situation could have been handled differently. Unfortunately, they were all fired by EHH. It would seem the crew did what they felt was the safest thing they could do by applying handbrakes on a certain amount of cars undoubtedly to avoid a runaway.
A four unit rear end helper set would have certainly been a huge plus and may have negated the need to apply handbrakes for the descending trip. NS would never try to operate like this on the Pittsburgh line. Upper management at CSX in my opinion are the ones at fault. Again, a complete investigation will be conducted by the NTSB
