Though officials haven’t yet completed their investigations into what went wrong, they already have uncovered violations of safety protocols that are “sufficiently troubling” that the agency decided to step in, an FRA official said.
Investigators have learned that the foreman of one of the work crews contacted a dispatcher using a cellphone, not an Amtrak-issued radio, a person familiar with the matter said. That is a frequent practice, some in the industry said, and it is permitted in some cases by Amtrak rules, where dead spots don’t allow radio communications to work.
But others warned that the use of cellphones poses greater danger, because unlike a radio, cellphones don’t allow other workers to overhear interactions with rail controllers, or to correct misunderstandings about who may be using different sections of a track.
“Many catastrophes have been avoided by people catching things other people said and straightening it out before it happened,” one of the people said.
A stand-down exercise effectively requires workers involved in safety-critical tasks to drill on the basics. The goal is to ensure that communication and safety protocols are in place to avoid the cardinal sin of railroad operation: incidents, like Sunday’s, in which a train, moving at more than 100 miles an hour, suddenly encounters workers or vehicles blocking its path.
But... Texas does hold the record, twice, for longest consecutive wins over OU, "8". 
