My first job out of college in 1964 was with the B&O, then owned by Chessie and now CSX. In those days a major problem was something referred to as “deferred maintenance,” a euphemism for not making enough money to afford to properly repair tracks. Today, when I read about derailments, more often than not they seem to stem from track deficiencies of one sort or another.
Historically, signaling was designed to be “fail safe,” and while I have no idea what is causing collisions today, I have to wonder if somebody is falling down on signal maintenance.
Bob Peirce
Venetia