I forwarded this article to my boy, who is an engineer on a Western railroad.
He wrote:
“It was either deliberate, or he fell asleep. I tend to think deliberate, since I’m pretty sure that Amtrak’s engines have “alerters” on them. Its an alarm that starts off as a flashing light, then turns to a light and audible alarm that gets louder and louder.
If you don’t hit a button to reset it, it will put the train into emergency braking automatically after about 15 seconds. Its designed to keep the engineer from accidently dozing off.
A couple of our engines have them, and they work..... ask me how I know :-)
Interesting, thanks for sharing.