I would guess that too, if the train were rounding a curve in Iowa, with cornfields on either side.
But if (and that's a big if) other trains were struck in the same area at roughly the same time, I'd be less likely to put "operator error" as first on my suspicions list.
Regardless, this is a murky situation, and probably will remain so. The powers that be will want to protect the engineer, and no one will want to investigate the urban youths who hang out near the track.
Perhaps the whole thing will be blamed on a faulty ball bearing.
It would be indeed unusual if someone was ambushing trains on that night. Not impossible, of course - flashmobs can be arranged via smartphones. But if there was a "competition" running that night among urban teens to hit trains, people will talk - too many, hundreds, would know.
However, as this thread demonstrates, it is hard to imagine how a thrown object could cause the train to accelerate and inevitably derail. As we can see in the photo, that is one tough locomotive; it stayed in one piece after leaving tracks; the glass cracked but retained integrity. In this photo you can even see the branch that was broken off. The locomotive is most likely *designed* to absorb collisions with thrown objects of some reasonable size. If the engineer wants to use the "involuntary incapacitation" or "external influence" type defense, he will have to come up with a very good story. As the engineer lawyered up and isn't talking, chances are that he had no such external, exonerating event to report.
For comparison, imagine that someone shot at the train and wounded the operator. The operator falls onto the controls, blacks out, then recovers, but it's too late. Would he remain quiet about his injury after the crash? That'd be insane - the shooter has to be found, and the evidence. You can't sit on such facts for a week.
