Join the discussion on the following article:
Colorado house passes two-person crew bill
Does this bill include the new commuter trains set to start out of Denver this year? That would be ridiculous.
I wonder who the second crewmember is required and what the state of Co. will require his or her position to be with the engineer? Perhaps a fireman, or maybe a trainee, as opposed to another engineer. The conductor is not really needed on a freight train, as adverse to a passenger train, where the conductor has a real job.
Is that even enforceable given the FRAs jurisdiction on operation?
Good call.
This legislation clearly specifies freight trains only, and excludes passenger trains.
If the Senate of CO approves this it will only kill short lines and branch lines of intrastate commerce. The crew size is under Federal Jurisdiction of the FRA and cannot be enforced on interstate traffic. This is illegal interference of interstate commerce. It is as worthless as if Colorado requires all couplers to be Miller Hook, a legal automatic coupler which they can do because the couplers on trains are a State Right jurisdiction. New York State established that before the Safety Appliance Act of 1893.
Many marginal lines my only exist using one engineer and mobile ground conductor. Denver to Grand Junction and Craig branch might be one of them soon and only a one engineer will make the train movement profitable.
This is all from the misunderstanding the M.M. & A. Railroad, which had the fiery wreck at Las Megantic, of only having one engineer. But there were two people who knew how the work was done in tying down the trains at Nantic because every crew which took over a parked train knew how many hand brakes he had to release when he got on a train for dispatch. Mr. Harding had for over a year failed to apply more than 24 brake shoes to the wheels and depended on the engine brakes to hold the trains. He got away with that for over a year until the power was shut off and the engine air brakes leaked off and were no longer applies. The 24 brakes shoes will not hold 10,000 ton on a grade. Only one relieving crew called the dispatcher office and reported insufficient hand brakes on the train he was about to take further. No correction happened. All the rest of the so called ‘second man’ was of no benefit for safe operation. The fear of questing the other brother’s work comes into play. This second man in Colorado will be a worthless expense and illegal to the US Constitution Commerce Clause. It will just make more legal waste of money.
The bill, clearly, needs some clarifying, but that’s politics. I do cringe when the “Empire Builder” leaves my city with one person in the cab, whether eastbound (535 miles to Minot), or westbound, over the Rocky Mountains.
Actually states can enforce those rules. For years the B+M had to have extra crew members in the Caboose for anything over 30 cars if the train orginated in NY. It was a state law. . It was only the elimination of the caboose that changed that. The trouble is now we have several railroads going to 16,000 foot trains. Imagine a broken hose somplace in that train. The engineer can’t leave the train and walk back over several miles of a train to find it without tying down the brakes of at least a quarter of the cars.