The Conrail engines, traveling above the 60 mph limit, passed two wayside signals and a device that normally sets off a cab alarm. "My perception of speed and distance and time were distorted."
But there was conversation and "a relaxed, party-type of atmosphere." Contrary to assertions by the letter writers, there was no drinking and no television to distract them. Cromwell passed the joint back and forth, then started lunch. In the last minutes before the crash, Mr. After a while, he said, "I wanted to belong, so I did what they were doing." But other crew members would send him off on errands so they could drink or smoke marijuana. "When I was first hired, I had high ideals," Mr. Gates said he hadn't planned on smoking pot at the controls that day, but he had done it before. "Had I taken the time to do it properly, I wouldn't have been in front of that train." "I didn't disable it, but I didn't take the time to find out what the problem was," Mr. In his eagerness to get going so he could return to the bars and get high, he said, he skipped critical safety checks that would have shown that the alerter - a whistle that warns the crew of signal changes - had been silenced with duct tape. "I felt good when I woke up," he said, and, contrary to suggestions by investigators, was "as sober as can be." But "the disease of addiction was still talking."
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