We’re celebrating a whole lot this year. We’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, recognizing the right of women to vote. I know a few of us are celebrating the 155th anniversary of Sherman’s March to the Sea, breaking the back of the Slaveholders’ Rebellion.
I have this friend, a railroad professional. I know I would never question his commitment to safety. I hope he wouldn’t question mine. This friend is concerned that railroad management will unfairly use medical information it obtains from employees, from employees’ medical care providers, and from the requirements of a medical fitness for duty regulation, to disqualify employees from service. He fears railroads will weaponize the information.
Not that long ago, E. Hunter Harrison’s methods and strategy for CSX were subject to close scrutiny, tough questioning, much doubt, some head scratching (close 8 of 12 hump yards, anyone?), customers complaining, labor opposition and STB inquiries. All of that and more was in response to Hunter’s trademarked program of “Precision Scheduled Railroading.”
You know what? I kind of like National Transportation Safety Board member Earl F. Weener, who has been an NTSB member since 2010.
The Federal Railroad Administration has issued a Draft Safety Advisory, 2018-01, Related to Temporary Signal Suspensions. For the first time I can recall, FRA is soliciting public comment “on all aspects of the Draft Safety Advisory.”
What a world. FRA is on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. NTSB is on Twitter and YouTube, and might be on Facebook, but I don’t know since the NTSB website doesn’t say one way or another, and I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, and not, to my knowledge on YouTube, or if I am, it’s not my doing, I promise.
We knew back in September 2017, when NTSB announced its board meeting to review and approve the findings of the investigations into the bumping block collisions at Hoboken and Atlantic Terminals, that come Feb. 6, 2018, NTSB was going to, ever so loudly, publicly hand FRA its head, a weirdly appropriate turn for a regulatory body still without a head.
As I understand it, communications and signals work was under way on CSX’s Columbia Subdivision at Cayce, S.C., when Amtrak 91, the Silver Star, collided with unattended locomotives and autoracks placed on the siding across from an automobile loading/unloading facility.
Those of you who know me know that I believe properly engineering a railroad means reducing the risk to safe train operations by properly configuring rolling stock, signals and track. Building the proper vehicles for running on the proper geometry is as important as properly operating that railroad. Almost.
Conrail’s Oak Island Yard in Newark, N.J., blew up at 12:14 AM on Jan. 7, 1983, some 35 years ago.