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I spent many an enjoyable evening arguing with my daughter (much smarter and a much better writer than her father) regarding which was the greater movie... .

Alien, or Aliens?

I advocated for the original; she was partial to the sequel.  Both had Ripley, but the original had Yaphet Kotto as Parker.  My daughter, she countered with Vasquez--ah Vasquez, the perfect Hispanic butch female, undocumented (I surmised) who has indentured her body and spirit to the imperialist military for a chance at legitimacy.  Played to perfection by Jenette Goldstein, and, like Kotto, Jewish. 

The arguments would usually precede our viewing of a double bill of both movies either at home or at the midnight showing of a cinema in the East Village, where we'd irritate the hell out of everybody around us by speaking the dialogue two to three seconds before the characters on the screen. 

"Some of us haven't memorized every word of the screenplay," others hissed at us. 

"Here's your chance," I would reply. 

Anyway, I eventually convinced my daughter, I'm sorry to say, as there's nothing that ties the binds of a family together like disagreement.

There's a scene in Aliens that always struck me as hilariously poignant.  It's the scene when the marines, having had "our asses kicked back there," are waiting for the drop ship to pick them outside the main atmosphere processing station and wisk them back safely to orbit so they can nuke the whole site and wipe out the entire colony or hive of xenomorphs. It's the only way to be sure.

The drop ship appears, shakily  on the horizon, spins out of control and crashes into the station, almost killing the expeditionary force and leaving them definitively up or down the creek without a paddle. 

Private Hudson, who's "short"  (so short he could parachute off a dime; so short he has to look up to tie his boots) goes on a rant-kvetch worthy of a character in a Woody Allen film-- a rant I will skillfully edit to spare the sensibilities of my readers (assuming I have more than one): 

"That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over! What the xxxx are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?" 

That rant came to mind when I read the latest safety advisory (2021-01) issued by FRA.  It seems that on some locomotives, a "train crewmember [may] circumvent a PTC enforcement by manually cutting out the pilot valve/brake stand, commonly known as the cut-out valve, prior to the PTC system initiating the brakes." 

As Private Hudson would say, "Well, that's great. That's just xxxxin' great, man! Now what the xxxx are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty xxxx now, man!" 

Except we're not, not really.  Let's keep in mind  PTC stands for POSITIVE train control , not PERFECT train control.  The impulse behind the development of the train control platform was the impulse to prevent human error,  human frailty, not human psychosis.

Truth is, PTC is not, no matter how comprehensive, a stand alone system.  We rely on a totality of measures to produce a system of safety.  That totality includes training, qualification, inspection, review, and direct observation, and serious penalties for failure.

Once upon a time in Egypt, I told the Vice-President Operations of the Egyptian National Railroad that I would never ride the head end of an ENR train. 

Why?  Why, because where I come from, we weed out the homicidal and suicidal maniacs before we put them in the locomotive engineer's seat, not after.

Apparently, based on my understanding of the causes of the list of collisions I had reviewed, that methodology, that order of doing business, that sequence,  had not yet made its way to Cairo.

Admittedly, the line between frailty and felony can waver, blur a bit, and even disappear, like letting a clerk sit on your lap and run your train, affectionately known as the "rolling bomb," at  excessive speed around a curve in Livingston, Louisiana, thereby derailing three dozen hazmat tank cars and leading to the evacuation of several thousand people. 

Criminal act or just damn irresponsible?  How about criminally irresponsible? 

But cutting out a brake stand, disabling the ability of the train control system to enforce speed and stopping requirements is different in that there can be no other purpose other than the need to defeat the safety apparatus.  That requires more than carelessness. It requires deliberate malice of forethought. 

Even when  our support systems do weed out the homicidal maniacs, the technology we deploy to prevent the transformation of error into accident,  sets up an almost evolutionary contest where the goal becomes to outwit the technology. 

I remember a time when we were installing automatic speed control on a section of railroad and a locomotive engineer wanted to show me how he could finesse  the enforcement of the cab signal authorized speed by centering the reverser.  This was an action he thought would "fool" the system by removing a direction of movement from the controlling station.  

So we commandeered a set of equipment and went for a test run, and when the cab signals dropped from normal to limited, he centered the reverser.  He was just about to say, "See?" when the audible indicator sounded, the cab signal indication dropped to restricted cab and a penalty  brake application took over.   

"You changed something," he said.  "It didn't use to work that way." 

"We changed a lot of things," I said.  "Some of them with you in mind." 

And that's another reason I don't feel we are out there in deep space,  marooned on LV426, with 17 days before we're reported overdue, and we better get back because they mostly come at night. Mostly.

We've been here before and we know how to correct this.  And we also know full well, that as soon as we do, somebody will be probing and pushing and trying to find another vulnerability.

We will, again and always, deploy all the other  components of our safety system so that we can keep up with the resourcefulness of those who are not homicidal or suicidal, but bored, or curious, or challenged, or irresponsible.

I used to worry, when I had an actual job on an actual railroad, about everything.  It was only after I retired that I realized I didn't worry about every everything.  I did not worry about an employee deliberately trying to kill himself or herself or others by disabling the safety system.   

I worried about everything else. Ignorance, irresponsibility, habit, routine were enough to keep me up at night. 

David Schanoes 

September 16, 2021

"Right!" Brett, Alien