LOS ANGELES -- In the first public comments from the family of the commuter-train engineer killed in a crash that claimed 25 lives in all, the man's brother said investigators must look more closely at whether equipment problems were a factor.

In an interview reported yesterday by the Los Angeles Times, John Sanchez also said his family aches for all those who lost loved ones in the Sept. 12 crash.

"There were no words to explain the magnitude of loss and what was in our hearts," he said. "We do care. We are sorry."

Sanchez called for a more thorough investigation into whether signal lights, radios and other safety equipment were functioning when the Metrolink train operated by his younger brother, Robert Sanchez, collided head-on with a freight train in Los Angeles.

"I want vindication, justice and truth to be known by the 25 families," Sanchez said.

The investigation is continuing but officials have said the Metrolink train went through a red light and the engineer did not apply brakes before the collision.

The county coroner's office performed an autopsy on the 46-year-old engineer's body but results have not been released pending findings from toxicology testing.

Sanchez's family said he had been fascinated with trains since boyhood. At age 7, when an engineer let him into the cab and let him blow the whistle, "he was hooked," John Sanchez said.

Robert Sanchez told his family he loved his job, though the 53-hour-a-week, split-shift schedule left him constantly tired.

"He was mostly happy when he was on a train," his mother, Rose Sanchez, told the Times. "That was his whole life."

John Sanchez told the paper his brother's supervisor had called to ask if Robert had any medical conditions that would have caused him to pass out.

John Sanchez said he told the supervisor his brother had adult-onset diabetes but had never complained of complications. He said family members agreed to the supervisor's request that they consent to a second autopsy paid for by Metrolink.

John Sanchez also said his brother may have been particularly shaken by a July suicide of a person who stepped in front of a train he was driving because he was still recovering from the suicide of his partner, Daniel Charles Burton, who hanged himself in the garage of their home in 2003.

Ruth Otte, a spokeswoman for Veolia Transportation, the Oak Brook, Ill., company that supplies Metrolink engineers, confirmed the July suicide, but that she could not comment about whether Robert Sanchez had requested time off to cope with it.

Los Angeles police Detective Bill Bustos, who investigated the suicide, did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press seeking confirmation that Robert Sanchez was the train's engineer when that suicide happened.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Terry Williams said the agency would look into any requests the engineer may have made for time off.