Four hours later

We are almost on our way! Creeping along and stopping every few hundred feet to have the train repair inspected (welders were here working).

Here is the scoop I got from my room porter, George. A dad and his two year old son were in the car. The dad was killed and the two year old has injuries -- do not know the extent. George later talked with me some more and says this incident is being deemed a suicide and attempted murder. The driver drove himself onto the train track with intent to kill himself and his son (thus the murder). George says this happens a lot, and the "suicidee" has no thought of how this affects anyone and everyone else, it is simply a fast and painless death. And in fact, I learned that a similar accident happened last week on the northbound route -- in a different place. I did not learn if that was deemed an accident or suicide.

We seem to be rolling along now -- it is 8:30 p.m., and the incident happened at about 4:15 p.m. by my best guesstimate. We were already running about half an hour behind schedule, so my guess is that we will arrive on L.A. between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. instead of the scheduled 9:00 p.m. arrival. Then they will need to get me to San Diego which had an original arrival scheduled for 12:50 a.m. It is anybody's guess when I will get there. That will depend on how and when they transport each of us to our destination.

Oh, and we got a new engineer.