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Railroad Workers United: Freight trains in excess of one mile in length too risky for 2-man crews

Posted by Olog-hai on Thu Aug 17 01:32:53 2017

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Railroad union says trains more than a mile long too risky

As trains get longer, 2-man crews struggle to prevent derailment, monitor cargo

Railroad engineers, like airplane pilots, learn to avoid crashes inside a simulator with computer-generated challenges: terrifying storms, epic malfunctions. But many workers say that simulator seems helpless when confronted by one peril Capital Region residents see every day: long trains. At least 8,000 feet (about one and a half miles) long, they often carry toxic or explosive cargo. There is currently no federal regulation limiting the number of cars in a train or number of crew needed.

"Long trains often crash or derail in the simulator," said Iowa-based Railroad Workers United officer Jeff Kurtz, a locomotive engineer for 41 years who retired in 2014. "They're a new phenomenon. The engineer driving can't even see the end of the train. Weather is now more of a challenge. We have to be aware of 'sun kinks' caused by waves of heat that make rails so hot, they buckle under a heavy train. And more than 100 cars takes quite a while to stop when you hit the brakes even at 10 mph."

A 178-car Albany-bound CSX train derailed last week in Pennsylvania. Its cargo of molten sulfur and propane ignited near tiny Hyndman, 100 miles from Pittsburgh. The blaze burned two days while 1,000 evacuees waited to return home. The U.S. Department of Transportation's speed limit for long trains is 50 m.p.h. in areas like the Capital Region, rural terrain punctuated by villages and small cities. Trains must drop to 5 mph when inside Albany city limits, said Albany city Fire Chief Warren Abriel, Jr.

Albany County Executive Dan McCoy held a press conference Thursday to detail his safety concerns about such trains coming to Albany's South End rail yard. McCoy had told federal officials towns and counties along rail routes should be alerted when hazardous materials are zooming through.

"That's never going to happen," JP Wright, a CSX locomotive engineer for 12 years and freight conductor for 16 years, told the Times Union from his home in Kentucky. "Railroad companies will argue that sharing information about cargo makes it too easy for terrorists to target a train."

Wright retired this year due to concerns about the safety of driving long trains with crews of two workers, usually an engineer and freight conductor.

"When we had crews of five and shorter trains, we could walk the entire length and make sure the car numbers and cargo correctly matched what was on the manifest," Wright said. "The only thing that regulated how many cars were in a train were union contracts."

Railroad workers are only allowed to work a certain number of hours in a stretch so they can remain alert. Walking the length of a two-mile-long train to check the cargo manifest took so much time, Wright explained, the contract set a limit on the number of cars in a train. But when oil boomed in the Midwest, the industry shifted to much longer trains to get oil to markets faster.

Albany County coordinator of emergency services Gerald Paris, Jr. said his responders find out what dangerous materials are on a train after an accident, not before.

"We go to the locomotive engineer or the freight conductor to get the manifest," Paris said. "We have a good relationship with CSX. I won't say great, but it is very good."

Paris praised CSX for flying him and fire department leadership to a Colorado for free training in how to extinguish huge flaming tank cars and other train cargo. CSX paid their airfares and lodging.

"So many long trains now come through Albany carrying hazardous materials that I'm not sure it would help me to get a heads up; I'd be on alert all the time," Paris said.

While he's learned to accept long trains as the norm, he's uneasy about the trend toward smaller crews.

"More crew is always better. It always helps to have that extra pair of eyes, that extra knowledge," Paris said.

CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle says the company has decided a two-person crew is ideal for long trains. He did not know if CSX ever sets a maximum limit on the number of cars that can be in a train. The Federal Railroad Administration oversees rail safety but doesn't offer much guidance.

"There are no FRA regulations for train length, but typically a train's equipment does have limitations (such as brake pipe air pressure, etc)," spokesperson Tiffany Lindermann said in an email. "The average train length is approximately 100 cars. FRA does not currently regulate how many people are required to operate a train."

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