Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-34633327-20171104074017/@comment-26018514-20171107001435

BenRG wrote: I suspect that guarding Amber was a very unofficial assignment (given the secrecy of Ozpin's cabal). It's possible that Qrow's official mission was to guard the munitions train and to notify the authorities if any White Fang agents were seen hanging around it.

Disliking Jacques Schnee on a profound personal level, Qrow chose to interpret those orders as meaning 'do not engage, only report back'. Or maybe he got some kind of distress beacon from Amber so he had to break off his planned engagement with Adam and Blake to protect the Fall Maiden. As the Anon said, Qrow wasn't doing that... what he probably was doing would be monitoring the situation due to suspicious activity, he saw nothing indicative of anything, so he left to finish his rounds.

The WF was nowhere near the tracks in large numbers, that was a small assault team high above the tracks... suspicious yes, easy to figure out after the fact, but not Qrow's problem at the time.