Pray for their families and the Train’s Engineer.
prayers sent
My son worked for Conrail in Selkirk, NY for several years as a dispatcher. Thankfully it never happened to him, but at that time, whenever a train hit someone or something on the track, the engineer, and the dispatcher were suspended with pay from their jobs until a thorough investigation occurred, and they were cleared to return to work.
My son has kept in touch with people he worked with, and it appears that Conrail closed their Selkirk, NY office, and moved all the dispatcher jobs to Florida. How one is to successfully oversee a set of tracks that isn't even in the same state as you is beyond me. He also said that when he was a dispatcher, and you were put in charge of a new region of tracks, the company would send you out on one of the trains, so you could ride over that region, study and visibly see, inspect, and take note of the track layout and area you would be responsible for. This would take more than one day. They don't do that anymore.
My father was a Track foreman for New York Central. He retired in 1966. Back then he and his work crew would ride up and down the tracks, and walk the tracks visibly inspecting them for problems. They'd fix the ones they could, and my Dad had to file a report every day on the problems that were more serious that they couldn't deal with that day. They don't do that anymore either. My son says there is a guy who inspects the tracks, but instead of walking the tracks, and visibly looking for problems, this guy wears a vest of some kind with all kinds of electrical tech stuff on it. He lays on the ground and lets the vest inspect that part of the track and evaluate it for problems. It just sounds so bizarre to me.