The Importance of Safety Improvements in Railroading

In 1951, the ICC mandated that trains were only permitted to exceed 79 miles per hour if automatic train stop equipment was in place and most rail agencies didn't mix cars of different weights on the same train. Only the Santa Fe implemented inductive automatic ATS as prescribed after the incident. Nobody else, not a single other class one railroad in the United States or Canada, decided to implement this because nobody decided it was a worthwhile expense. In an interesting move, the Chicago Burlington, the rail road involved in this accident decisions that they upgraded their track on all the other parts of the system so they could run 79 miles an hour over the entire route. You come up to the lowest common denominator