newly traveling this route of track
Well, here's the problem with that theory:
He had driven the Northeast Corridor route between Washington and New York for about three years
http://www.wsj.com/articles/amtrak-engi ... 1431627406
And this article, when you read it in it's totality, raises another question:
Amtrak Engineer Brandon Bostian Had Passion for Trains
y Kris Maher
Updated May 14, 2015 9:05 p.m. ET
98 COMMENTS
Brandon Bostian, the 32-year-old engineer who was at the controls of an Amtrak train that crashed Tuesday, had a passion for the railroad and the job he has held since graduating from college, friends said Thursday.
“If you had seen him a week ago and talked to him, no matter what you talked about, you would have known that he loved trains and Amtrak and helping transport people from one place to another,” said Matt Broffman, a friend who attended the University of Missouri with Mr. Bostian.
Mr. Bostian, who lives in Queens, N.Y., has become the focus of intense scrutiny since investigators said Wednesday that the train was going more than twice the 50-mile-an-hour speed limit as it entered a sharp turn, where it jumped the tracks. Eight people were killed and many of the 243 on board were hurt.
Mr. Bostian didn’t return a message left on his cellphone and there was no answer at his home Thursday. His lawyer, Robert Goggin, and representatives of Mr. Bostian’s union didn’t respond to requests for comment.
But Mr. Goggin told ABC News that his client can’t remember the crash and can’t explain what happened.
“He remembers driving the train, he remembers going to that area generally, [but] has absolutely no recollection of the incident or anything unusual,” Mr. Goggin said in an interview that aired Wednesday night.
The lawyer said Mr. Bostian suffered head injuries in the crash and needed 14 stitches.
Brandon Bostian, the 32-year-old engineer who was at the controls of an Amtrak train that crashed Tuesday, had a passion for the railroad and the job he has held since graduating from college, friends said Thursday.
“If you had seen him a week ago and talked to him, no matter what you talked about, you would have known that he loved trains and Amtrak and helping transport people from one place to another,” said Matt Broffman, a friend who attended the University of Missouri with Mr. Bostian.
Mr. Bostian, who lives in Queens, N.Y., has become the focus of intense scrutiny since investigators said Wednesday that the train was going more than twice the 50-mile-an-hour speed limit as it entered a sharp turn, where it jumped the tracks. Eight people were killed and many of the 243 on board were hurt.
Mr. Bostian didn’t return a message left on his cellphone and there was no answer at his home Thursday. His lawyer, Robert Goggin, and representatives of Mr. Bostian’s union didn’t respond to requests for comment.
But Mr. Goggin told ABC News that his client can’t remember the crash and can’t explain what happened.
“He remembers driving the train, he remembers going to that area generally, [but] has absolutely no recollection of the incident or anything unusual,” Mr. Goggin said in an interview that aired Wednesday night.
The lawyer said Mr. Bostian suffered head injuries in the crash and needed 14 stitches.
Mr. Bostian grew up outside Memphis in Bartlett, Tenn. Stefanie McGee, who worked with Mr. Bostian at the Bartlett Express newspaper from 2000 to 2001, said Mr. Bostian wrote about locomotives, buses and roads, among the news and sports he was required to cover.
Even vacations, she said, presented an opportunity to talk about trains. “He’d come back from a trip and his souvenir would be a train ticket or a subway map,” Ms. McGee said.
Ms. McGee, who is now city clerk for Bartlett, said she sent Mr. Bostian a birthday message in the past couple of weeks. “He’s a sweet guy with a super corny sense of humor,” she said. “The more puns there were, he loved it.”
Mr. Bostian graduated from the University of Missouri in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, the school said.
Mr. Broffman, who was a member of the Acacia Fraternity along with Mr. Bostian, said his friend was thrilled to learn he had been hired by Amtrak. “Working for Amtrak was always his dream job,” Mr. Broffman said.
Mr. Bostian started as a conductor in 2006 and became an engineer in 2010, according to a profile on LinkedIn. He had driven the Northeast Corridor route between Washington and New York for about three years, said a person familiar with the matter. Nothing in his work history raised any immediate red flags or indicated a behavioral pattern that could shed light on the accident, this person said.
Jeff Kocar, who worked for Amtrak for 28 years in a variety of jobs, said he met Mr. Bostian around 2007 at a training facility in Wilmington, Del., and described him as a conscientious, dedicated employee. He said unlike some Amtrak employees, Mr. Bostian didn’t hide his affection for railroads.
“A lot of people don’t like to admit that it’s their hobby or they’re enthusiasts. They don’t want to be perceived as railroad geeks,” he said.
Neighbors who live in the same apartment building in the working-class section of Queens describe Mr. Bostian as a friendly man who enjoyed being an Amtrak engineer.
“He was happy with his job,” said Moresh Koya, who lives one floor above Mr. Bostian.
Mr. Koya, who said he had met Mr. Bostian at a dinner party, described him as a “very personable guy, very nice, responsible.”
I'm not reaching any conclusions here, but I think it's legitimate to raise as a question:
Could even a good and decent man, who had achieved his lifelong dream, be counted on to let people know about a medical condition that could take that dream away from him?
It's a fair question to ask....
