Passenger Trains > Engineer at controls during deadly train derailment near DuPont s

The engineer of the train that derailed near DuPont in 2017 filed a lawsuit against Amtrak this week.

Steven Brown’s complaint alleges he wasn’t properly trained and technology that could have stopped the train hadn’t been installed Dec. 18, 2017 when the derailment of Amtrak Cascades 501 killed three and injured dozens.

An Amtrak spokesperson declined to comment about the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Pierce County Superior Court.

One of Brown’s attorneys, Fred Bremseth said Wednesday: “He’s as much of a victim as anybody else. ... He’s a great engineer, a great human being.”

The lawsuit says Brown wasn’t properly trained “on the controls and instrumentation on the Seimens Charger locomotive he was driving,” or on the Point Defiance Bypass route.

It was the first public run on the new, 10-minute faster route from Seattle to Portland.

The lawsuit also notes that Positive Train Control, the technology that slows down trains that are going too fast, wasn’t installed on the train or the track at the time.

“Plaintiff suffered physical and emotional injuries as a result of the derailment,” it says.

Bremseth declined to say more Wednesday about his client’s injuries.

Brown’s allegations are similar to those made in a National Transportation Safety Board report last year.

The safety board said Brown — who Amtrak hired in 2004 and promoted to engineer in 2013 — lost track of where he was on the route and was going more than twice the speed limit.

Amtrak should have trained the engineer better, and Positive Train Control should have been installed, the NTSB reported. It has since been put in place.

The NTSB also found Sound Transit should have better addressed the danger of the curve where the derailment happened, the state Department of Transportation should have made sure the route was safe, and the Federal Railroad Administration used substandard rail cars.

“The engineer was set up to fail,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said at the time.

In addition to Amtrak, Brown’s complaint names Does 1-50.

His lawsuit follows many filed by others on the train, some of whom were badly injured. There were 77 passengers and six crew members on board.

Amazing.  

He wasn't properly trained by Amtrak, that I'll give him.

PTC was not required at the time.

 

      Typical lying lawyer crappola: " The guy is a great engineer and great human being but he wasn't trained ( and should he have known that too if he is so great ) and he didn't know where he was. "  Shouldn't that kind of statement make your tongue rot and fall off or something similar??
       When was this 'great guy' going to comment that he was lost and didn't know what to do about it, or anything else apparently?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/20 11:18 by dcfbalcoS1.

Surely this is a FELA claim, and under the statute, the doctrine of comparative negligence applies. If the Company can be found partially at-fault, the plaintiff may be awarded damages. And undoubtedly Amtrak's attorneys will make Brown's own conduct a central issue at trial, if it's not settled out of court first.

Paul Wilson
Arlington, VA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/20 11:31 by Dcmcrider.

If the lawsuit goes to trial, the proceedings could be interesting.

I am not excusing the engineer's failure to control his train, but plenty of guilt is spread around.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/20 11:24 by ts1457.

From what I've read, I tend to agree that he wasn't properly trained. But to blame the lack of PTC? This is why the railroads are so hot to displace people with computers. Sad.

Typical accident lawyer tactic, throw everything and see what sticks.

Page 51 lines 18-21  

I realized that, when I saw the 30-mile-an-hour speed sign at the beginning of the curve, that I was not where I thought I was . . . 

As we've seen, that can be a real bitch of a problem when you're trying to run a train along a line that has a long, high-speed tangent and immediately goes into a very sharp curve.   

If he didn't know where he was, why didn't he slow down?  

https://dms.ntsb.gov/public/61000-61499/61332/616779.pdf

CA_Sou_MA_Agent Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> If he didn't know where he was, why didn't he slow
> down?  

Given that the recording transcript has him saying that he was confused about where he was at Orillia and Longview Jct....

TAW

Aren't you supposed to be looking ahead? If I crash my car on an unfamiliar road is it my fault?

With all due respect for the highly specialized skills possessed by railroad engineers, and not to be overly simplistic, it seems that the job of engineering a train can be boiled down to a few things: starting, stopping, speeding up, and slowing down. Paying attention to when to do these things is essential, and I think it can't be denied that insufficient attention was the key cause of the accident, full stop.

Having said that, Amtrak could have done more to smooth this inaugural run, as well as prevent this accident, and future ones at this location. If the 30mph curve coming abruptly after a long 80mph stretch was such a problem (and it obviously is), all of those training runs over the line prior to this should have shown this up; and whatever means necessary to alleviate the danger should have been done, placing great emphasis on alerting the engineer by flashing trackside signals, signs, or whatever. As this was the very first trip on a new route, very high profile and long anticipated improvement in Pacific Northwest transportation, with many years and millions of dollars invested, the least they could have done is provide another person in the cab, to provide a second pair of eyes in case anything went awry. They would have hopefully recognized where they were and alerted the engineer that it was time to slow down. But, anyone who had made the run before, which this engineer had done, should have been keenly aware that the need to bring the train down to 30 mph from 80 at a precise location and no later, was a matter literally of life and death.

I went to the new Tacoma station that morning on my way to work, to see the arrival of the new train on its new route. I got there with about 10 minutes to spare, stood around the station among the Amtrak public relations people, WADOT personnel, assorted lookee-loos, and even a few passengers. Got myself a souvenir lanyard. The arrival time was 6:50am if I remember, and that time came and went. I finally left at 7am, thinking disgustedly to myself, "Those idiots can't even run the very first inaugural run of a brand new train route on time". I found out the revolting news when I got to work. I thought at first that the train was going too fast around the curve because the engineer was trying to make up lost time, but apparently his going too fast was inadvertant.

He blew right by a slow board. Had he never seen one before. Case needs to be throw out for lack of merit. How long was he an engineer? 

I'm not taking the side of the engineer, but I have heard through the grapevine that when he qualified on this very stretch of track before the inaugural run, it was with different, more familiar, motive power.  Supposedly, the inaugural run was his first on this line with a Siemens Charger.  That might contribute to the confluence of events.  He may also have been conversing with a student engineer riding with him in the moments before the curve.

CR900945 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm not taking the side of the engineer, but I
> have heard through the grapevine that when he
> qualified on this very stretch of track before the
> inaugural run, it was with different, more
> familiar, motive power.  Supposedly, the
> inaugural run was his first on this line with a
> Siemens Charger.  That might contribute to the
> confluence of events.  He may also have been
> conversing with a student engineer riding with him
> in the moments before the curve.

According to the in cab video,. he was yaking to the student conductor and not pay attention to what was going on outside. thus blowing by the speed board

Between this and a fatal VIA Rail wreck with multiple engineers in the cab on a Niagara Falls train works against the theory some have that 2 engineers in the cab at a time is better than one. 

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Between this and a fatal VIA Rail wreck with
> multiple engineers in the cab on a Niagara Falls
> train works against the theory some have that 2
> engineers in the cab at a time is better than
> one. 

Following your logic then; every train with a two man crew is an accident waiting to happen huh?

Posted from iPhone

joemvcnj Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Between this and a fatal VIA Rail wreck with multiple engineers in the cab on a Niagara Falls train works against the theory some have that 2 engineers in the cab at a time is better than one. 

I would like to show you the tabulated data that shows the number of times where a second person in the cab "saved the day" and prevented a catastrophic wreck.  

Oh, wait.  I can't do that because such data has never been, and never will be, tabulated.  When wrecks don't happen, data is not collected.  

Juniata Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> joemvcnj Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Between this and a fatal VIA Rail wreck with
> > multiple engineers in the cab on a Niagara
> Falls
> > train works against the theory some have that 2
> > engineers in the cab at a time is better than
> > one. 
>
> Following your logic then; every train with a two
> man crew is an accident waiting to happen huh?

That would be a strange flow of logic though.

The question to be answered is whether having two in the cab increases the probability of distractions causignone to miss events of importance. Joe is right in musing about whether the fact that two in the cab caused the engineer to mmiss significant trackside signs would suggest that two in the cab increases the probability of distraction leading to accidents.

Incdientally in some sense any train in motion is an accident waiting to happen. The question is of probabilities and whether they are acceptably low or not, and what actions can lower the probability of accident further.

"When in doubt, take the safe course" is a part of the rules culture everywhere.
With the unfamiliar locomotive and the fog, the safe course would have been to run with some level of caution.
In this prior trips he knew the 30MPH curve was out there, somewhere.
I am not excusing the performance of Amtrak and WADOT in this but  the last chance to prevent this accident still rested with the engineer.