Open Door

If you follow me on Twitter or are a member of the Friends of the California Zephyr Facebook group (and I know that there's at least one person who overlaps the latter), you will have seen this story last night as it was happening. Much of this is copied from what I wrote last night.

( Rollby Not Okay )

This morning, there was a comment on my FB post from one of the conductors on that train. (The engineers and conductors work between Reno and Winnemucca, going out one day, spending the night in a hotel, and then working back the next day. The on-board service crew like the car attendants and cooks are based out of Chicago, working the train to Emeryville, laying over one night, then returning the next day.) She said:

Thank you for the call. As there was someone in Reno climbing on a freight next to our train we went on a search for a stowaway after securing the door. In the end the door must not have been secured properly down line and came open on its own.

The doors on Superliners are held closed by mechanical latches. There is nothing to tell the engineer up front that the doors are not secure. There are small lights down the side of the train that show green if the doors are latched and red if not. As I understand it, the engineer and conductor typically look down the side of the train before departing from a station stop, but if a door comes open while under way, there would be no alert to warn anyone about it unless one of the engineers just happened to look back down the side of the train.