Locomotive engineer once was a position that required years of apprenticeship as a fireman to qualify for. Those who had a background in rail transportation were preferred hires. My father started by working as a blacksmith's helper in the Southern Railroad shops in Alexandria Va and then went to work as a motorman for the Washington Street Railroad (streetcars) for two years before getting an opening as a fireman with the Pennsylvania RR. He was a fireman for 10-12 years before qualifying as an engineer on both steam and electric. Even then he had to work mostly as a fireman until the eve of WW2 because he lacked seniority sufficient to bid for regular engineer runs.
I know firemen have been eliminated as headend crewmen so I don't know how one moves up to engineer today. By being a mainline trainman I suppose.
AMTRAK is its own universe so I presume they can run affirmative action programs and push whoever they want to the footplate. This guy is a good example of what happens when an unfit and insufficiently experienced person is given far too much responsibility for their slender shoulders to carry. I suspect this fellow was sleeping soundly when his engine left the rails. That is the only thing that comes to mind as he was running far above normal speed levels in that highly congested area. He should have had a head end brakeman in the cab as well. In part having two persons there is to provide greater visibility and situational awareness. Sadly I suspect this person was also nodding off or worse absorbed in his Ipad or video games.
My father as an engineer, waged a decades long struggle against crew members goofing off on his engine. No sleeping, reading, or later, no use of transistor radios was tolerated on his engine. As he often said a railroad is a place you can killed really fast or kill a lot of other people. This wreck is a sad commentary on lack of professionalism and just plain lack of seriousness by Amtrak.
The situation where the brakes are full on in the turn may have contributed to the loco leaving the tracks.