Re: Track or Loco? Spread the Rails or Climb Over?

I really don't think that anyone is trying to blame the former operator for this. The fact is that the ties at the point of derailment were old and the rail spread enough (over 38") to drop #21 on the ground. Perhaps the weight of #21 caused the ties to become unhappy or perhaps it was just their time, every railroad out there runs thousands of trains for 30+ years over the same ties, then one day the ties get unhappy and fail. sometimes you just don't know why. Last year I watched D&SNG #482 pull a train through a switch in the Durango yards just fine. Five minutes later, along came the Eureka (a little tiny 4-4-0) through the same switch. The rails spread under the Eureka and dropped its pilot truck on the ground. If I were to apply some of the logic i am seing here on the NGDF, I would blame the Eureka for all of this and ban it from the railroad forever and assume its operator (no offense to Mr. Markoff intended here, just ,making a point) was a incompetant moron, instead of accepting the reality that the ties that were fine one minute failed the next.
Jason Midyette