Rail & Labor News from RWU
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Weekly Digest Number 4 - January 23, 2024 | |
Welcome to the RWU Rail & Labor News! This news bulletin is produced and emailed out each Tuesday morning. We hope you find each week's news and information useful. If so, please share with co-workers, friends, and colleagues. If you like, you can sign them up to get all the news from RWU HERE. Or forward them the link. Note: If you read over this news bulletin each week, you will be sure to never miss the important news of what is going on in the railroad world from a worker's perspective!
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Editor's Note: CP engineer Mark Bretherton has quite the story about corporate irresponsibility that has led to a series of trains wrecks in the Rocky Mountains, including a fatal wreck that claimed the lives of three of his friends and co-workers. | |
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Paula Duhatschek / Jan 22
From his living room in Cochrane, Alta., Mark Bretherton gets nervous when a train passes the tracks about a block away from his house. Bretherton, who spent decades as a locomotive engineer, says working on those trains hasn't left him with much confidence about their safety. "There's an old saying on the railway, 'Uphill slow, downhill fast, profit first and safety last," said Bretherton. "It's a known problem that's been going back for decades [and] things are not improving."
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Editor's Note: Perhaps some of those record profits being plowed into stock buybacks could be better spent in modifying at-grade highway crossings to better protect the public and the safety of railroad workers. In some cases very little is needed to make a rural crossing much safer, like trimming brush that obscures motorists' view, paving the road in the vicinity of the crossing, advance flashing caution lights and other relatively inexpensive fixes. | |
Although the House Transportation and Infrastructure’s Rail Subcommittee hearing Thursday was titled, “Oversight and Examination of Railroad Grade Crossing Elimination and Safety,” the 21/2-hour session also dealt with other issues. These included miles’ long trains, the state of wayside equipment detection, the pending mandatory crew-size rule making, and Class I railroads’ reticence to embrace the Federal Railroad Administration’s Confidential Close Call Reporting System.
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Progressive Railroading / Jan 15
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will conduct a safety investigation into two fatal crashes that occurred last week involving Brightline trains and motor vehicles at the same grade crossing in Melbourne, Florida.
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Editor's Note: Shit happens .... when the right conditions come together. A few inches of fresh snow, a steep grade just above an interlocking at-grade diamond with another busy railroad, an underpowered train perhaps. We cannot change the physical geography nor the weather. BUT we do have control over the horsepower-to-tonnage ration, locomotive maintenance, the length of the train, etc. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this little "mishap." | |
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Trains Magazine / January 15
A railroad webcam captured dramatic video and audio of a Canadian Pacific Kansas City merchandise train that stalled on a grade in Iowa on Friday — and then began rolling back downgrade toward a BNSF Railway train that was occupying the at-grade junction of the two main lines in Ottumwa. After a few tense minutes, the BNSF train cleared the diamond and the CPKC crew was able to bring Kansas City-St. Paul train 251 to a stop just 20 feet from the diamond.
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Editor's Note: When RWU learns more about this brother's death we will share. | |
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Trains Magazine / Jan 16
The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct an investigation after a railroad worker was killed Monday in Jewett, the agency announced Monday. WOIO-TV reports the worker was an employee for the Columbus & Ohio River Rail Road, a Genesee & Wyoming property, and quoted a statement from the parent company said its “thoughts are with [its] colleague’s loved ones and teammates at this difficult time.”
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Editor's Note: The rail industry was giddy with excitement, boasting increased traffic loadings in the remaining weeks of 2023. That did not last long. Carload traffic appears headed into the toilet once again. Remember, this is a long term trend. The U.S. Class One railroads are moving 24% less freight than they did in 2006! For every 4 carloads we moved 17 years ago, we move just 3 today. This is unacceptable! | |
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Trains Magazine / Jan 16th
Rail traffic declined 4.1% in the U.S. last week compared to the same week last year, the Association of American Railroads reported yesterday. Total carloads for the week ending Jan. 13 were down 10.2% compared with the same week in 2023, while U.S. weekly intermodal volume was up 1.9% compared to 2023. Three of the 10 carload commodity groups posted an increase compared with the same week in 2023. They were chemicals, petroleum and petroleum products, and forest products. Commodity groups that posted decreases compared with the same week in 2023 included coal; grain; and nonmetallic minerals.
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Editor's Note: It is hard to believe that it is already almost a year since the NS freight train derailment and resultant ecological disaster at East Palestine, Ohio, February 2nd, 2023. And despite endless proposals for "rail safety legislation," to this day there are still no additional federal rules and regulations, leaving the rail carriers to themselves to do exactly as they please, the cause of the wreck in the first place. | |
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If there hadn’t been construction planned for the bridge that crosses over Leslie Run, one of the creeks that runs through the middle of East Palestine, Ohio, Rick Tsai and Randy DeHaven might not have noticed the worst contamination they’d seen in the creek in weeks. A backhoe had hoisted a chunk of earth from the bank of the creek, leaving a pool about eight feet across and deep enough to come up to the knees of Tsai’s rubber fishing waders. What it also left, in Tsai’s words, was an opportunity for a sort of “geological sample” — evidence that oil and chemicals still lingered in the soil and in the creeks six months after a catastrophic derailment.
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Editor's Note: They say the goal is to help shortlines compete so why is BNSF deeply involved with the development? Full autonomy is hokum and not nearly ready for prime time. When this stuff breaks down in the field, who will fix it? | |
Julie Sneider / Jan 19
The House Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials held a hearing yesterday on grade crossing elimination and safety. But subcommittee members and witnesses raised numerous other safety issues — including the Feb. 3, 2023, derailment of a Norfolk Southern Railway hazmat train in East Palestine, Ohio — and whether Congress should pass additional regulations with the goal of reducing train-related derailments, accidents and fatalities.
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NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT | |
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Taylor Noakes / Jan 15
In an era where actual labor songs — of the sort popularized by Pete Seeger in the 1940s — are in short supply, Rage Against the Machine has become the quintessential representative of “protest music.” This is despite the fact that “Sleep Now in the Fire” is now over twenty years old. One could make the case that we are long overdue for more overtly pro-union, pro-worker anthems.
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