Unfortunately, Amtrak will be the ones that pay any settlements under the agreements between RR's.
I'd bet you're wrong, in this rare instance. Because CN gave Amtrak a specific and unusual signal to proceed full speed through the speed restriction, I'd bet you that CN is actually responsible for damages.
If the car ahead of you is stopped, and there's less than a car-length between it and you, that won't help matters.
Not totally true. A year or so ago, my prized '79 Mercedes 300SD ground to an unmoving halt just around a blind corner on a relative unused road near my house, with what later turned out to be THREE locked brake calipers. I still am at a loss as to what caused all three to lock solid at once, but they did. In anycase, my immediate assumption was that the rear axle had jammed (I'd been having rear axle problems), and I left my girlfriend with a maglite to direct anyone who happened to be coming around the curve.
I then got my other car, the '95 E300 Diesel (not a powerful car, trust me) and positioned it behind the bumper of the '79. I managed to push the thing about 225 feet so that it was off to the side and not in the immediate path of some poor fool who came barreling around the curve unsuspecting.
I'm sure that if I can shove a car like that with three locked calipers, the average person could push a car in front of them out of the way enough that they'd get a more glancing blow, at the least.