Along an isolated stretch of train track not far from the airport in Orlando, a man curled into the fetal position and waited.
When a Brightline train rounded a bend at 90 miles an hour, just after 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, the man looked right at the train crew.
The death on July 28 of Francisco Valenzuela Fernandez was the first fatality in Orange County by a Brightline train, according to federal data and a Miami Herald/WLRN investigation of Brightline deaths. Service launched in South Florida in 2018, and extended to Orlando in September 2023…