Link to article: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PRINTING_PLANT_DEATH?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-05-18-14-04-08
“Man fatally crushed at Philly-area newsprint plant”
FTA: "…KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. (AP) – A railroad engineer near Philadelphia has been killed by a roll of newsprint that fell out of a boxcar and crushed him.
“Officials say the death occurred Friday morning at a plant that produces the Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.”
" A newspaper company spokesman says the engineer was in his 40s and worked for Brandywine Valley Railways. The spokesman, Mark Block, says the worker was below the platform to offload the 1,800-pound rolls when one fell out, apparently after shifting in the boxcar…"
The media historically have trouble specifying the correct job titles when confronted with railroad accidents. Engineer, Conductor, Brakeman, Trainman, Flagman - they are all the same to the media.
My condolences to the individual that was killed and his family.
My condolences to his family, and his work “family”.
While extending my condolences, I’d want to point out that there is so much wrong here.
A railroad employee should not be helping unload the car. If he was in the occupation of spotting the car, there is no way he should have been down beneath an open door. If the door opened up suddenly due to previous shifting, the car should have had the load straightened by the railroad before being spotted. A shortline has the authority–perhaps the requirement–to not accept a damaged car from the delivering railroad.
There is no way this should have happened.
Unless there is a unforeseeable mechanical failure - no injury or fatality should ever occur; however, the human animal, being what it is, will do what they are not supposed or expected to do and put themselves in the situation to be injured or killed.
Carl, and Balt ACD:
Are exactly right. To the point that Carl raised:
“…While extending my condolences, I’d want to point out that there is so much wrong here…” and similarly, BaltACD’s point[paraphrased]“… about the media getting Job descriptions and titles wrong…”
It would seem as if in the rush to print the story, the facts got mixed up in what actually happened.
Truly, the railroader did not deserve to die as happened, and condolences to their family, but as Carl pointed out there is so much wrong on so many levels with the story as published. I posted it in hopes that the truth could be brought out here by some of our Posters who might be able to get to the truth of what actually happened to cause the individual to be killed while doing their job. Possibly to save a similar fate for another person.
Better details:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/152029275.html?cmpid=15585797
This is from the Philadelphia Inquirers web site.
Rgds IGN
OK, I’m totally guessing here, but…
The railroad in question here is a shortline. Shortlines often have a less formal relationship with their customers. I would not be the least bit surprised if the RR employee prefaced his opening of the door with “let me get that for you.”
Too, the railroad may have decided to wait for the car to be unloaded so they could immediately haul it back out, potentially saving demurrage charges for themselves and the customer. That might explain why it might actually have been the engineer who was involved.
Regardless, it’s a sad loss for all involved.
I think there must be something missing in this story. I have handled big rolls of paper as a truck driver for a printer (I worked for a printer in Denver for a while that printed the Santa Fe calenders for McMillan Publishing), I would think that if they tipped over on the door of a boxcar that they would jam it, or at least make it known that they had shifted because it would be very hard to get the door open. Also, the person unloading it should be aware of how heavy they are and warn anyone around to stand back, and I can’t see a switch crew, who are out of necessity wary, standing around nearby watching them open a jammed door.
Sad news indeed. This is something that absolutely should not have happened, no matter what the circumstance.
Perhaps it was a case of the car only being partially unloaded, so the crew shut the door to dig out another car and put it back, (opening the door)?
Customer I serviced had boxcar doors fall off when the industry people tried to open them. Not something to screw around with, that’s for sure.
My condolences to his work and home families…
Over on Trainorders.com is a note from a UM&P/BVRY employee. He said that standard procedure at this plant was for the loads to be spotted, the engine to be cut away, and then the engineer and counductor would go back and open the doors [amazing!]. This car was the fifth one they did that day.
I guess the rolls were stacked three high in this car, like columns. It’s still amazing that if the column was leaning, the crews didn’t have some unusual experience opening the door (I would expect that a plug door would have opened quickly outward, but would have been hard to move sideways) that would have warned them that something was amiss inside the car.
The employee says that after an investigation is held, it’s probably likely that crews won’t be opening doors for customers any more.
I’m still bothered by the fact that this car got to the plant at all with the load shifted, or that people not cognizant of the potential problems could be caught in a trap like this. It certainly sound like this setup had somebody’s name on it–the railroader took the hit for a newspaper-plant employee. Would somebody whose job it was to actually unload the cars have noticed a problem earlier than the railroaders did?
With all due respect to BVRY and their vision of ‘customer service’; T&E personnel should NEVER be opening any doors at a customers facility - that is the customers job. If the customer has difficulty in opening a door(s) then the BVRY mechanical forces should be summoned for their expertise.
T&E personnel are not trained and do not possess the proper tools for opening doors. The only time T&E personnel should even be fooling with doors is when necessary to close on that had come open on line of road, and even then they must know their limitations and get assistance from mechanical forces when necessary.
This incident was senseless on so many levels.
Balt, thank you for being so coherent about what I was thinking! [bow] [tup]
Fascinating. If the worker that was killed had been an employee of the receiving company I can certainly hear the exact same arguments being given for the senseless of it. Only it would be stated that the RR personnel should be the ones to handle the RR equipment and they would/should have known about “shifting loads” and the dangers thereof.
“We know how to handle the product once it is in our hands, but we should not be responsible to know how to open and close doors on the RR cars or what to do if the cargo has shifted while they were handling it. That is the responsibility of the RR and their training.”
Hmmm???
Either way, somebody got killed and that is the senselessness of it all. The argument here should be what can be done to keep it from happening again, rather than shifting the possibilities of an inevitable death to some other corporate entity.
I can tell you that on the PTRA, T&E crews are forbidden to open or close any door, hatch, cover or man way cover, nor are we allowed to close the dump doors on bottom dump hoppers.
Period.
If a boxcar is found in a plant and we have pull or move orders, and a door is open, we highball the car, notify the plant about the problem.
If the door is damaged, we will go back light and pull the car after the plant has made sure the car is empty, and take it to our nearest rip track, where it is repaired.
If my trainmaster saw me open a boxcar door for any reason, I would be pulled out of service.
We are seriously hard core about that, for this very reason…Pasadena Paper shipped out lots of brown craft type paper, the rolls are huge, just clear the door opening, and we had a door not closed properly, the roll that got away wiped out several automobiles in our parking lot at Pasadena yard, just crushed them like they were toys, ended up against a telephone pole, cracked the pole at the base.
I am just amazed the T&E crew were allowed, even encouraged to open the doors, shifted loads in box cars are common and deadly.
This may be a case of the railroad trying to offer “truck-style” service with tragic consequences. The people who do the unloading at places like newspapers and other printers (actually all big customers, Home Depot and Wal-Mart were the worst, some companies won’t even deliver to them) often like to play games with drivers knowing that they want to get moving as soon as possible, especially long-haul independents who get paid by the load rather than by the hour. I drove a truck as a student and I would show up at places like the newspaper in Colorado Springs and they would make you stand around and wait if you didn’t kiss their a*s, make you wait for a door to unload, and the driver always opens the door and folds out the dock plate. I always told them I was getting paid by the hour so take as long as you would like, although even that wasn’t true, I would be asked what was taking so long if I didn’t show up at my next stop fast enough. So there is pressure to hand unload, to re-stack pallets (the trucking company likes tall pallets that will fill up a truck, customers like short ones that will fit on their shelves). And if you had to stop suddenly on the road your whole load will shift and you will spend hours picking up spilled pallets at every stop. But at least with a truck you are familiar with what happened and are careful when you open the door. If the railroad is pushing their crews to provide that sort of service and loads shift during switching I am saddened but not surprised by the result here.
Sorry but any carrier that wants their T&E crews to do such things should be shut down. I’m sure there will be an FRA investigation. This is completely bogus, and now this person’s family has to suffer.
On some small lines, the owner is the T&E crew.
ROAR