Engineer found dead

[plonq]

Aw nuts, I was really hoping that he'd somehow survived. =(

"Witnesses say they saw smoke coming from the rear brakes on one of the engines.

There is speculation brake failure was to blame."

Speculation from who? This kind of reporting drives me up the wall. They obviously didn't get the immediate answer they wanted from the railway (we don't give out idle speculation to the press), so they asked one of the witnesses standing nearby. "Well, the brakes were smoking and the train was not stopping, so they must have failed."

I have a strong suspicion about what happened here. I'll be curious to hear the results from the official investigation (they tend to broadcast the investigation results internally when there is a - thankfully rare - fatality involved).

Comments

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm really sad about this too.

I wonder if he told his buddies to jump and he was trying to stop the train :(

[plonq.livejournal.com]

From the sound of it, that's pretty much what happened. The other two jumped to safety after imploring him to do the same, but he insisted that he was going to "ride it out".

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

Those speculative reporters think he may have saved some lives for doing so.

I don't know if that's true, but the train did bail short of a smelter and a highway, which may have been pure luck. or pure skill.

As the engineer is no longer with us, we will never know :(