Free Republic

Within an hour of the train collision, dispatching computer tapes would have been pulled. Technicians with supervisors would have checked the signal to see if there was any problem.
The engineer of the metro link train reported no problems.
I agree that the announcement that the cause was human error was premature. But the NTBS will come up with the same conclusion. After 25 years on a major railroad you know how things work. Everyone takes shortcuts and does things they should not do. 99 times out of a hundred we get away with it.Its that one time——as in the case of a friend that lost a finger from working on a running machine, ignoring all safety rules simply because it is the way he always did it-— it is that one time that will get you. The engineer of the Metro link train run out of times.

The Yale Historian says the quilt thing is a hoax. I think maybe the historians are like all other experts. They did not publish it so it can't be real. There is no "official" evidence. Meaning no historian put it in a book. I know from various projects that this "hoax" has been passed down from generation to generation. I am am a firm believer that the best guage of history is what your great grandfather said. Not what some Yale historian says.