The engineer was an employee of Veolia, which contracted for operation of the trains.
Was there anything unusual about having that particular freight running on that day? Was it typical for the Metrolink to wait at that point for a freight to pass? If the Metorlink normally had no other traffic to deal with on that run, the engineer could have gotten complacent.
I asked my son if the dispatcher would have notified the engineer ahead of time that he was going to be stopped along the way for another train to pass. He said that under law, you couldn't do that, because the dispatcher couldn't know for sure exactly where the train would eventually be stopped. As well, because many of the signals are out of the hands of the dispatchers, he wouldn't know anyway. It's all a bit confusing to me.
Whoever the dispatcher is that was covering that route at the time of the accident, he's more than likely been suspended with pay indefinitely. It's standard practice to suspend employees like that when a derailment or accident occurs, at least until an investigation can be conducted.