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Monday, April 04, 2005 |
From Railway Age, comes a comment on the reports that the nation's railroads are experiencing a safety crisis. Interesting spin, though. It seems that the editors think that "highly selective anecdotal evidence" and "an unusual cluster of high-profile railroad accidents" are creating the false impression that current rail operations unsafe. Read for yourself.
Spotlight shining sharper on rail safety
More derailments and hazmat leaks, rancorous debate over hazmat routing, and now a mediocre grade for rail in a "report card" on transportation infrastructure are sharpening an already-glaring spotlight on railroad safety and are heading the industry toward stepped-up government scrutiny and possibly new or increased regulation.
"The news yesterday that the nation's civil engineers gave rail infrastructure a poor grade only further inflames the whole rail safety debate and gives more reason for Congressional hearings," says one industry observer. "The railroads repeatedly have said their physical plant suffers from no deferred maintenance, but they are having an increasingly difficult time supporting their position."
The "poor grade"—a C minus—came from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which for the first time included rail in its report on the condition of the nation’s infrastructure. ASCE based its grade partially on reports that have been released previously by other organizations, referring to growing rail freight traffic, chokepoint conditions, and long-range infrastructure capital needs in the $200 billion range cited by the Association of American Railroads and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, among others. (Access the full report at http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index.cfm>;.
The ASCE released its report card shortly after two incidents on Union Pacific—a hazmat derailment near Los Angeles that temporarily shut down Metrolink commuter operations and a hazmat spill in Salt Lake City in which several thousand people were evacuated—were widely reported in the media. No deaths or injuries resulted from either incident.
In California on March 8, a 21-car pileup in the City of Industry punctured one of three tank cars containing combustible propylene glycol, forcing evacuation of 200. UP says the derailment was caused by a broken rail.
The day after, on the same line, another UP train carrying chemicals and other commodities split a switch while moving, separated in two, and derailed, with several tank cars coming to rest against a warehouse in Santa Fe Springs. There were no leaks, no injuries, and Metrolink service was not affected. Whittier police arrested a 14-year-old boy and charged him with purposely throwing a manual switch lever, which caused the train to split in two. The lever was equipped with a lock, but it not known whether the lock was engaged. The boy was charged with felony train wrecking and was released to his parents.
In Salt Lake City, a tank car that UP says may have been mistakenly identified on a manifest as an empty after being loaded by workers at Philip Services Corp. in Fernley, Nev., with 13,000 gallons of a mixture of highly corrosive acids, was routed to the railroad’s Roper Yard, where it leaked 6,000 gallons after its contents ate into the tank car’s lining during a suspected adverse chemical reaction. It was supposed to have gone to a disposal facility in Ohio. Questions have been raised as to whether the tank car’s contents were accurately identified and why the car, which was designed to carry one type of chemical (sulphuric acid), was loaded with the corrosive mixture at all. The Federal Railroad Administration is investigating.
Meanwhile, CSX is seeking to block a 90-day local ban on certain hazmat shipments through Washington, D.C. by the district’s City Council. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a "statement of interest" with the federal district court in Washington urging the court to invalidate the ban, which is due to take effect April 11. DOJ’s statement, which supports CSX’s position, also includes opinions from the Departments of Homeland Security and Transportation. It states that rerouting shipments around Washington would compromise safety and security by lengthening travel time, increasing the vulnerability of a hazmat shipment to a terrorist attack; unfairly shift risks to other communities; and cause congestion on other lines and in other yards, harming the economy.
CSX is also dealing with grade crossing safety issues in New York State, where it has entered into a voluntary settlement with the State Attorney General’s office. The railroad has agreed to implement several safety measures for grade crossings statewide under a $1.5 million settlement. It will implement safety monitoring and reporting changes and pay for a $500,000 pilot program to reimburse local police for their costs in protecting railroad crossings identified as having malfunctioning warning devices. The Attorney General said CSX failed to make quick repairs to malfunctioning safety equipment at crossings as required by law, failed to alert local police about malfunctions, and failed to maintain appropriate records tracking the status of malfunctioning warning systems at crossings.
According to the agreement, CSX will repair warning systems within 24 hours, notify police, improve testing and record keeping, and update and improve maintenance instructions to employees. CSX describes the agreement as a "partnership" and says it "acknowledges and appreciates that the Attorney General was a partner in many of the actions that we have taken." Those actions include "completing signal and/or track maintenance work at 143 crossings, including the complete rebuilding of some of those crossings; deploying an electronic means of recording crossing warning device inspections and tests; relocated the railroad’s 24-hour Police Communications Center to the Network Operations Center in Jacksonville, Fla., to facilitate and coordinate company response to reports of crossing malfunctions; providing additional and revised instructions concerning appropriate response to reports of crossing malfunctions; providing enhanced review of train crew performance; and enhancing communication with local public officials regarding crossing safety and other issues."
The Attorney General’s investigation began after two people died at a CSX crossing in Henrietta, N.Y. (near Rochester) on Feb. 4, 2004, in which the warning lights were found to have been disabled. Last month, CSX agreed not to contest a $298,000 FRA civil penalty, the largest fine a U.S. railroad has paid in such a case in several years.
The media attention generated by these recent events plus others (such as the Norfolk Southern hazmat derailment in South Carolina last month that killed nine) has coincided with a series of high-profile investigative reports on grade crossing safety and hazmat transportation in The New York Times. These reports, Railway Age notes in its March issue, have used "highly selective anecdotal evidence" and have "been helped by an unusual cluster of high-profile railroad accidents. They leave the impression that the railroads, through incompetence or indifference, are endangering the lives of people who venture near their property, especially highway motorists."
"Cumulatively, the perception all this creates—in the minds of the public and legislators—does not bode well for the industry," says one observer.
12:38:20 PM 
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The Omaha World-Herald reports a switchman injured at work in an Omaha BNSF railyard.
Published Thursday
March 24, 2005
Switchman loses part of a leg
A 55-year-old switchman for BNSF Railway Co. lost part of a leg Wednesday while working in the company's Omaha railyard just south of the Henry Doorly Zoo.
The injured man, a 33-year employee of BNSF whose name was not released, was taken to the Creighton University Medical Center in critical condition shortly after 1 p.m.
Steve Forsberg, general director of public affairs for BNSF, said the man lost his left leg below the knee when he was caught between two box cars "while performing routine operations."
The incident was under investigation, Forsberg said.
Inside sources reveal that the brother was working as a utility man and was on the same track as an RCL assignment at the time of his injury:
Regarding this amputation a railroader explains: "As to this injury, this was a 'utility man' working on the same track as the Remote Crew. Somehow, he got in between cars; the cars were moved by the Remote Crew, and we all know how this story ends. Tragedy in any case."
We think this speaks to the problem of one-man RCL jobs, one and two-man RCL jobs utilizing a non-RCL helper who may not even be RCL qualified, and the recent proposal in some places to allow the secondary RCO to DISMISS his box and turn it off for an indefinite amount of time, thereby deactivating all the safety features that were originally engineered into the system. As inconvenient and annoying as it is to wear the box all day, at least if you get into trouble and fall down, things will soon come to a halt, alerting your partner that something is wrong. There follows a letter written to the appropriate authorities explaining some of our concerns.
As per my conversation with brother X of yesterday, here is a written account of questions and concerns that some of us who are using Cattron equipment in the Twin Cities Terminal have expressed with regard to an RCO software change announced in SUPERINTENDENT BULLETIN NO. 86.
The change allows two RCL operators to invoke an OPERATOR DISMISSAL whereby the secondary Operator Control Unit (OCU) can be turned off and the primary OCU can continue to move the locomotive without having to re-link in a "one-box" mode. At a later time, the secondary OCU, which has been in STANDBY mode, can be turned on and REACQUIRED, returning the operation to a "two-box" mode, again without having to re-link from within the cab of the locomotive. Prior to this software change, turning off one of the OCUs brought all movement to a standstill and prevented the box that was still powered on from initiating movement.
A reading of SUPERINTENDENT BULLETIN NO. 86 leaves us with many unanswered questions, the first of which is simply - what is this change designed to accomplish? One might assume that a change or tweak in the programming would be made either to eliminate a problem or to expand the capabilities of the system. It is also assumed that in either case, the change should not introduce new risks.
The BULLETIN sheds no light on the rationale for modifying the software and attempts to elicit such information have so far been unsuccessful. And because of the safety concerns discussed below, we would expect to see some description of activities that are allowed and those that are prohibited for the operator of the DISMISSED OCU. So far this has not been addressed.
But the most important question and concern of all is whether this change introduces new risks to the operators. Given the agonizing that the FRA went through in their RCL GUIDELINES with respect to the design and implementation of a TILT indicator, a MAN-DOWN alert and the limited ability of an operator to give himself a TIME EXTENSION before the MAN-DOWN alarm is transmitted, how is this new ability to effectively turn off this protection for an unlimited amount of time justified?
When we were being RCO trained we were told that leaving the OCU unhooked from our VEST at the bottom, in order to be able to bend over without setting off the alarm, was the equivalent of tampering with a safety device and a de-certifiable offense. In fact, at the beginning of Terminal implementation of RCO, when the trainers and safety captains and the first RCO class discovered that a secondary operator could give himself a TIME EXTENSION of the TILT feature and be merrily bending over working in various RED ZONES while the primary operator was moving the locomotive, this was viewed as a serious SAFETY problem and the system was reprogrammed to prevent it. The later software modification that allowed both operators to TILT-extend at the same time still deactivated both TIME EXTENTIONS once movement was initiated. Since the beginning of the RCO experiment in the Twin Cities it has been considered UNSAFE to allow any modification of the original TILT TIMEOUT period or to allow such a TIMEOUT while the RCL was moving. With this new modification we will have the ability to completely remove this very important protection for the secondary operator who may be required to operate in his own RED ZONE while his locomotive is moving. Otherwise, what is the point of this change?
At CSX DeWitt Yard (Rochester) Brother John Sneddon slipped, fell or was knocked down and killed while working an RCO assignment. There was no MAN-DOWN alert broadcast. Informed sources tell me that, in falling down, he ACCIDENTLY turned off his OCU. Now the carrier and the experts from Cattron want us, for some unstated reason, to be able to WILLFULLY turn off our OCU and our MAN-DOWN protection. To many of us working out there in the trenches this makes no sense.
9:17:34 AM
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