math teaser, kinda tough

[AleoMagus]

You are correct. I did need to know that John was older than Art. As for my impression that you didn't need to know, I now realize that I was wrong.

I managed to narrow it down to John being the conductor and Pete being the engineer. Then I knew it had to be one of the two options of Art/tom as Engineer/brakeman. I simply tried the first and tested it for consistency against all the assumptions. It worked and I rushed to post, only realizing a couple of minutes later why the second option was impossible. For this, you need the relative ages of John and Art.

So in a sense, I got a little lucky that I tried the correct option first, though it did indicate the incompleteness of my method.

Regards
Brad S