he was on the phone talking about which platform he was going to stop at and apparently got distracted enough to miss the braking point (on a stretch of the line without automatic control).

Frightening

sensing equipment to over-ride the conductor and slow the train if speed is too high at a specific location, like a mile or half-mile before the danger spot.

He has told me plenty about all the considerations and the route knowledge that is necessary. He had maybe (we think) a 5th grade education...maybe 7th but he needed to go to work and get out of the holler. Both his children went to college.

This is just gross neglect by that crew it sounds like.

The default attitude of train brakes is to be engaged, a safety feature on all trains that dates back many many generations (it varies by country and system).

When there's a fault in the system, the brakes will engage.

Thus, it's unlikely that brakes are to blame.

Modern locomotive units have governors, don't they? If these fail, or if they can be overridden, it takes some serious human failure to allow (or cause) that to happen and then to fail to engage brakes, I would think.

I can't see how this could be anything but human error/failure.

How sad.

I don't want to have it, but I do.