This is the crew out of Columbia that are apparently responsible for the crash last month in South Carolina that left nine dead.
I feel sorry for them losing their jobs, but more sorry for Chris Seeling who lost his life and his Conductor who inhaled chlorine…
LC
My guess is that the crew of the parked train broke some operating rules. According to the story, the union has gotten involved and is appealing the termination.
I suspect railroads fire people everyday for rules violations. Given the severity of this accident, the public has been made more aware of what efforts the railroad makes to prevent it from happening again.
Erik
Railroad employees being “fired” is routine and a complete misnomer to many. Clearly, this incident that resulted in them being fired is extreme but depending on each employee’s disciplinary history and the forthcoming official NS investigation the “firing” could very well be a suspension. Last I checked the rules stipulated communication between two members of the crew is mandatory in the case of restoring a mainline switch to its normal position. Since we still know very little about what happened its entirely possible that either the conductor or the brakemen informed the engineer that the switch was restored back to the main and to release the authority except that it wasn’t true. This would relieve the engineer’s responsibility if he wasn’t in position to observe the switch directly. Just a couple weeks ago a conductor informed one of our engineers that the derail was down and ostensibly the engineer sensed something amiss and repeated the question a few more times. The conductor insisted it was down, the engineer backed up and cars derailed. Assuming he didn’t deliberately derail his own train, he messed up and because the crew complied with the rule the engineer will walk. Next rule change will have you engineers walk back and visually verify everything we do before moving. 
The union agreements state that after an incident takes places that warrants a possible company investigation, the carrier has 30 days to decided to call one or not. After the testimony takes place by crewmembers involved, union reps, carrier witnesses and perhaps others, then the carrier has 30 days to hand down any suspensions. To say that the NS crew involved was “fired” is not totally correct. They may have been pulled out of service for thetime being. It will be probably another 4-6 wks until a final decision is made on the issue. This is the general prodedure that takes place when bads things happen out on the ballast.
For them not to do their work, and actually check that the switch was alligned wright is criminal, they can get tried for criminal negligence for that, and should. There is no excuse for not checking on that when you know what is at stake. If in my line of work, I funded a loan without checking if I had the right wire info, I would be fired on the spot, and so should they.
Brad
It’s different when there are unions involved… nobody gets fired on the spot. Well, you might get fired but it will be grieved.
i know that it is different, but it shouldn’t be, if that crew failed to do their job, and caused an inury let alone all those deaths, they should be out of a job period. I think that it is gutless that the Unions are already fighting their being put on leave, or what ever they gave them. That is one of the problems I have with unions, is that you have no accountability. The place where I work, I would get fired if I didn’t get my job done, in a union, nothing would happen to me.
Brad
That’s not entirely true. There is accountability, unions are there to make sure everything and everyone is treated fairly. Discipline is still handed out, people are still fired. The union just makes sure management doesn’t step over the boundries or single out people for wrong reasons.
that may be the goal of the union, but it is not the case a lot of the time, there are a lot of instances I know where someone should ber fired, but because of the unions, they are not.
Brad
Good duck…
No one has the offical NTSB ruling or findings…
Because they are not finished with their investigation…
Fired at a railroad means lots of different things, everything from being suspended for 30, 60 or 90 days…to fired for good, meaning no matter what the union does, your gone.
Now, all the “facts” we have in connection with this accident are what we have read here in this forum, seen on TV and read in newspapers, and we all know how good the latter two are at getting facts correct!
We can spectulate as to what was said between the crew members, wether the engineer was told the switch was lined back for the main or not…did the brakeman and conductor fail in their duties…but in the end, not a one of us were present and witness to the events…so its all educated guessing.
As for being prosecuted in the criminal justice system, sure, it can, and most likely will happen…and the civil justice system will have a lot of lawsuits filed, lots of wrongful death suits, loss of property, on and on and on…
which is why NS has fired them, to distance themselves from them, and put the carrier in the position of being able to say they took action against the crew…PR and legal butt covering.
But think about this, before you pass judgement on the crew…
I would bet my bottom dollar that they have, and will continue to have a deep, long lasting hurt about the death of civilians, and the knowledge that what happened resulted in the death of two of their co-workers will haunt them to the grave.
The blame and anger you heap upon them is nothing compaired to what they will whip themselves with, for the rest of their lives…
Until you stand there, looking first hand at the end result of this kind of mistake…and looking into the eyes of the guys who caused it, you really shouldn’t judge them…
When its your turn in the spotlight…how would you like to be tried, jugd
Can we stop with the union-bashing already? Is it some sort of PC thing these days to hate unions, and if you don’t you’re not a patriot or something? The company freely entered into a contract. No one held a gun to the company’s head. If they didn’t like it, they could have sold the property to someone else and gotten into a more gentle line of work, like pizza making. The union is doing its job grieving the firing. The railroad is doing its job enforcing the operating rules. Let’s let the contract govern.
On a railroad, you can make an error that can kill someone every day – every minute. Your average dispatcher is making 100-500 decisions every night that if made wrong can easily result in someone’s death. An engineer, conductor, switch foreman? Them too. Signal maintainers, roadmasters, car men? All of them as well. Every one of them making decisions governed by a rule that if made wrong can result in death. Sooner or later almost everyone at a railroad is going to make a rules violation. It’s a matter of odds catching up with you. You can’t be perfect 100% of the time. That’s why most people in the running trades carry job insurance.
If you were to permanently fire everyone at a railroad every time they made any rules violation whatsoever, by now you would have fired the entire population of Planet Earth. It’s a dangerous and tough business. It isn’t for everyone. No one wants to see anyone get hurt, and railroaders work their butts off to be safe and make sure it never happens. But occasionally it does happen. Let the legal system file a manslaughter charge, and if they can make it stick, then that’s one thing. If you fire one person permanently for a rules violation, you’ll have to fire everyone permanently. To do otherwise is flatly illegal. You can’t ask the railroad to do something illegal, and you can’t ask them to do something impractical, either.
The railroad has many safeguards built in so that most rules violations result in no harm.
[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard
Good duck…
No one has the offical NTSB ruling or findings…
Because they are not finished with their investigation…
Fired at a railroad means lots of different things, everything from being suspended for 30, 60 or 90 days…to fired for good, meaning no matter what the union does, your gone.
Now, all the “facts” we have in connection with this accident are what we have read here in this forum, seen on TV and read in newspapers, and we all know how good the latter two are at getting facts correct!
We can spectulate as to what was said between the crew members, wether the engineer was told the switch was lined back for the main or not…did the brakeman and conductor fail in their duties…but in the end, not a one of us were present and witness to the events…so its all educated guessing.
As for being prosecuted in the criminal justice system, sure, it can, and most likely will happen…and the civil justice system will have a lot of lawsuits filed, lots of wrongful death suits, loss of property, on and on and on…
which is why NS has fired them, to distance themselves from them, and put the carrier in the position of being able to say they took action against the crew…PR and legal butt covering.
But think about this, before you pass judgement on the crew…
I would bet my bottom dollar that they have, and will continue to have a deep, long lasting hurt about the death of civilians, and the knowledge that what happened resulted in the death of two of their co-workers will haunt them to the grave.
The blame and anger you heap upon them is nothing compaired to what they will whip themselves with, for the rest of their lives…
Until you stand there, looking first hand at the end result of this kind of mistake…and looking into the eyes of the guys who caused it, you really shouldn’t judge them…
When its yo
I agree with Ed. There is quite a bit of speculation going on around this whole incident. We really have no idea of knowing what even happened that day as he said. I’m sure the results of the NTSB won’t be out for some time. Innocent until proven guilty should still prevail, especially when death and peoples emotions are so high about a given subject!
I understand this is easy for me to say, not really having a direct connection to the situation. But nevertheless, rushing to judgement, either on our parts or on NS’s part is not in anyone’s best interest here.
Time and investigation will come to the root of the problem and the necessary actions can be taken at that time, not now.
For the civilians out there, the slightest incident can result in the employee(s) being “held out of service” pending formal investigation. Examples would be run thru a switch or corner a car. Either might result in very little damage, if any, but they are serious matters in the company’s eyes. If your actions or any of your crew member’s actions directly contributed to a cardinarl rule violation you’ll not be allowed to work until the investigation is held. It can take several days for them to schedule an investigation and then several more days before it actually happens. Being out of service for a week or two is common. You are not paid for this time off unless you are not found guilty. Some employees pay for “can insurance” to cover the loss of income from being held of out service and subsequently being “fired” or suspended for 5, 10, 30 days or more. Engineers typically get harsher penalties and endure more time off.
Part of the problem here is the use of the word “firing”. In my youth, being fired meant being removed from your job permanently because of a screwup on your part. Nowadays, the term seems to cover everything from layoffs to disciplinary suspensions with little explanation or differentiation.
That could be in other businesses, CSS, I wouldn’t know a thing about that. But railroads have always been like this – at least as far back as all the old heads can remember, and there’s a few I know with seniority dates in the 1940s, still. When you’re fired at the railroad, though, you are usually well-and-truly fired (as opposed to suspended without pay). The railroad doesn’t have to hire you back. But sometimes they will, and offer you your seniority back, too.
OS
Anyone know what kind of signalling they use in that territory? Usually if a main-line switch is reversed you get some kind of restrictive signal before it. Anyone know about where it was, like at an interlocking or yard entrance or whatever? I just have a hard time thinking how a trailing train could just take that switch with out knowing it was reversed unless it was dark territory?
It was not signaled territory – just like a lot of secondary main lines in North America. Switches off main tracks are as common as hens teeth on some of these lines. That’s nothing new.
Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about when you say “yard entrance” and “trailing train.”
OS
The second paragraph of the news story uses the term “terminated” when it attributes the report to a company spokesman. Sounds pretty permanent to me, barring a successful appeal.