On a snowy, February afternoon, three seasoned railroad men, an engineer and two conductors, were running a daily Maryland (MARC) commuter train with student passengers from Brunswick, Maryland, into Washington, D.C. At 5:35 they were only 11 miles from their destination at Union Station. Down the road and around a bend, a massive Amtrak passenger train was slowly rolling up the line toward them, finally underway on its route to Pittsburgh after being delayed in Washington for over an hour. Although there were two sets of tracks on the CSX Railroad's mainline, both trains were approaching each other on the same one. That was temporary. The dispatcher had already arranged to get them on separate tracks by opening a crossover switch ahead. The day seemed to be closing quietly and insignificantly, but for a number of small, time-altering glitches that somehow had been lining up over the past hours like stars in their courses (three in the last few minutes)-an unscheduled station stop, a distraction and an oversight-to lock the MARC train's impossible fate into place like gold bells rotating one by one onto the screen of a jackpot slot machine. What was about to happen could have been avoided if a couple of more seconds had been added onto the daily clock that afternoon.