I am sorry that I was so harsh on the Unions, I just find it hard to belive that they would stick up for a crew if they found out that those guys forgot to change the switch. It bugs me that we have this we must protect the worker at all costs menatlity. If a guy screws up like that, he should be fired with no chance for a reinstatement. There are too many lives at risk for any railroad company to allow a worker to get away with that. Now if those guys didn’t do it, then I take it back, But right now, there is now way that they should let the guys back on the job.
Brad
What would be your decision regarding a crew that made an error that COULD have cost some lives or contaminated a town’s water supply, but because of some ironic turn of events they did NOT cause the disaster? Would you want them fired also? They made the same degree of error as the crew that caused the aformentioned disaster?
And where would you draw the line as to what constituted a disaster-causing error? Almost every mistake a railroader (or doctor, cop, pilot, etc) makes COULD cause a death or disaster, should circumstances be just right. Should we fire all of them, too?
These guys made a mistake. Just like you do. Just like I do. And unless all three of them decided to become mass-murderers that day, what they did was unintentional.
As was previously stated, the crewmen that were responsible are quite likely suffering an anguish you cannot imagine. Is that not punishment enough?
I would fire that guy as well, when you put someones life in danger because of negligence, because you either forgot about something, or didn’t bother to look, that is what I would fire them for. People are allowed to make mistakes, but when you are negligent, then those mistakes are ones were I would fire the employee. Things like overrunning a switch, I would call just a mistake, but either missing a signal( not because of conditions, just missing it), or forgetting to put the switch back lined for the main, when you know that could cause injury, is not something that I would accept.
Brad
Zardoz and Ed Blysard must be writing in a foreign language. You’ve completely glossed over their careful distinction between intentional neglect and unintentional neglect. No one will argue with you on intentional neglect. But you haven’t proven that it happened. You haven’t even a shred of evidence. You’re presuming it.
But unintentional neglect – or carelessness, whatever you want to call it – is inevitable. Are you planning to fire yourself? Have you stopped driving forever because you once ran a stop sign? Or because you once sped 2 mph over the speed limit? Did you ever “forget” to signal? Those are all the same thing – and while in traffic they might get you a ticket (if anyone’s looking!) on a railroad they will ALWAYS get you fired, and most of the time, someone IS looking. You’re holding railroaders to a standard of perfection that I seriously doubt you would ever dream of holding yourself.
I pray you never get your way. Because within six months, at the outside, you’d fire 100% of the employees at the railroad. After that, you could move onto health care and fire 100% of the doctors, paramedics, and nurses. Then into law and fire 100% of the cops, attorneys, jailers, judges. Then into mining: they’re all gone. Also everyone in construction, steelmaking, airlines, shipbuilding, shipping, fishing, farming, and every other business where people can get killed by a small mistake. Employees in these lines of work all can – and do – make mistakes that are negligent and can kill someone. But they’re much less forgetful and careless than you allege, and besides, systemic safeguards are built in.
People make mistakes. They’re human. If you demand 100% zero-tolerance on mistakes, you cannot employ human beings. You can’t even employ yourself.
OS
But Brad,
Over running a switch is just as dangerous as the other things you mentioned…
Trust me, I work in a yard, and running by a switch can have just as disasterous results as missing a signal…after all, a switch target is a fixed signal.
You used negligent to describe the crew…
That word means “Marked by or inclined to neglect.”
and " Careless or casual."
Railroaders are very, very rarely negligent…careless or casual usually means dead on a railroad…
If you are implying they are guilt of negligence, which, as applied to the legal concept, means “Failure to excersise the degree of care considered reasonable under the circumstances.” then you must know something the NTSB dosent…
There isnt a railroader on this, or any other forum, that has not made the mistake of forgeting to line a switch back…there are rules that address that, both to the person that lines the switch, and any crew that is going to use or cross over that switch.
Has anyone though of the other side of it…
Not to say the other crew did anything wrong…but…
In unsignaled territory, (dark) the most important rule is restricted speed…GCOR rule 6.28…
Simply put, that rule states that when opperating in unsignaled territory, a train must proceed at a speed that allows it to stop within 1/2 the visual range of men, equipment, train, cars or obstructions that foul the track, and derails and switches lined against that trains movement…
So, who screwed up?
As for the guys being “fired”…thats SOP for any railroad…
You still dont have all the information to declare they deserve to be fired…
Do you know they failed to line the switch?
You can prove the switch was not lined correctly?
You know, for a fact, that the crew that left the local in the sideing didnt line to switch, and you can prove it wasnt a act of vandalsim?
I understand that railroading is a dangerous business, but there should be no reason for someone to forget to line a switch. If it is that hard a problem to remember to line it, then maybe they should make something to make sure that you remember to. It is incocievable to me that you could forget to line that switch. And yes I don’t know if they are guilty of this or not, I am just talking about this if they are.
Brad
I guess we will get a web site just like CSX it will be NS -SUCKS.com if they dont get their jobs back.
Brad:
- No one is excusing anything. We’re not, the railroad isn’t, the union isn’t. We all want to go home in one piece tonight.
- You don’t understand that opening and closing that switch isn’t the only life-safety item that crew touched that day. It is one of at least ONE THOUSAND such items they did that day, and 1,000 the day before, and 1,000 or more every day they were called to work since the day they hired out. Any single one of them done wrong, or forgotten, can kill someone! So if this crew has had a perfect record for 10 years, and worked five days a week, in that 10 years they have each made 2,500,000 life-safety decisions. Do you reasonably expect any human to make 2.5 million correct decisions in a row? How many life-safety decisions do you make every day at work?
- If you want to have a device that can help make that switch, and everyone just like it in the U.S. a fail-safe switch, you’d be talking over 50,000 switches. Cost, $100,000 each, minimum, on a fully allocated basis including future maintenance, inspection, verification, etc. Where do you suppose the railroads are going to come up with $5 billion to do that? That’s almost as much money as they spend every year on new rail, ties, ballast, locomotives, cars, and computers. The shippers can’t and won’t pay it. Then all the freight those lines will haul will go to highway, which is even less safe, or the economic activity will simply cease and tens of thousands of people will go unemployed.
OS
O.S. Don’t have a clue what you’re talking about when you say “yard entrance” and “trailing train.”
What I ment was if that switch was an entrance into a yard. When one train is behind another train it is considered a trailing movement, or a trailing train, it is trailing behind. Usually there is communication between trains when they are following each other. I have no idea of the track layout or how much time passed between the first train and the second train. I am asking to find out. Did the second train hit the first one from behind or head-on?
I didn’t mean a new device, just something like a check list that they have to fill out and turn in at the end of the day showing that they completed the check to make sure the switches were alligned right. That is something that would be relatively in inexpensive to do. I guess the thing that bugs me is that it is so obvious the danger you can have by having a switched lined the incorrect way, and I have heard that it is fairly common to have this problem, then I think that there should be no excuse for this to happen.
Brad
heavyd: There is such a thing as a trailing switch, or a trailing move through a switch, but one train following another is simply “following.” That’s all. Trailing is not a term I’ve ever heard or used, but we do use “following movement” about ten thousand times every day.
Usually there is NOT communication between two trains following each other. There doesn’t need to be any. The dispatcher assigns authority for movement to each train, and while they might be aware of the other by overhearing that radio communication, or by observing how the signals fall, or because they looked at a crew lineup before they left their initial terminal, or engage in chit-chat, there’s no reason they’d have to know about each other or talk to each other in the general case (there are always exceptions, of course).
In the case at hand, one train was tied-up on an industrial track. The crew was off-duty and gone. The other train arrived some time later, entered the track at speed, and collided with the parked train. They happened to hit engine-to-engine, but that means nothing, as the train in the industrial track was a non-directional movement the moment it entered it. Apparently the switch leading to the industrial track was “reversed,” or “open,” that is, lined for that track instead of for the main track. Reason why is not yet released. The line is not signaled and is operated under a type of verbal movement authority.
There’s little else to know, or worth knowing, or that can be said, at this point.
Brad: FRA has proposed that (mandated that?) already. Whether it has any actual value is debatable. I think that it will be a net negative – the time and effort spent complying with it will detract from attention to other safety measures of equal or greater risk, plus it will require a lot of walking back and forth – and that right there is a hazard. Railroads are full of trip-and-fall hazards, and every trip on foot is a new opportunity to find one.
OS, thanks for the reply, I have a question, aren’t the brakeman suppose to go back and check the switch when they are not going back out on the main anyways? I would think that would be a prudent thing to do, unless they would have to go more than a quarter mile. I just think that there has to be a solution to fix this. It is a very dangerous problem that should be fixed somehow.
Brad
Truly spoken like someone who has never worked in the rail industry. Rules exist for all parties in the industry. While the companies ‘prosecute’ employees for operating and other rules violations…there are rules that the companies must comply with. The presence of Union Representation within the disciplinary process ensures that the companies comply with the rules. Without the Unions the companies would make the rules up as the go along, even with the rules, they try to make rules up on the fly.
With 40 years in the industry, 20 on each side of the Union Line I know what each are capable of.
Brad,
Your list is not a failsafe device…no more safe than a track warrant copied wrong by a fatigued conductor is safe…
What if the guy really, really thinks he lined that switch, and checked it off the list?
I line, at a minimun, 100 switches a day…and I line the lead switch for my switching lead at least that many times…
And I screw it up, at least once a day…most of the time, just before I kick a car, I look at my switch…and catch the goof, but not allways…
So, I am negilent?
After all, I just let a 170,000. lb rail car roll free down the wrong track!
In fact, I did so today, two of them at once.
But, I was prepared for that…short version is the tracks all have cars in them already, with hand brakes, so no real harm done…
But, I forgot to line a switch…so, shouldn’t my carrier fire me?
Its the exact same thing you want this crew to be fired for…a switch not lined correctly and cars passed over it, going to the wrong place!
As horrible as it sound, OS gave you part of the reason there is no failsafe switch…and even those controled by a dispatcher can fail to work…and yes, there is a rule about that also
Its the economics of railroading.
Heres the bad part about our jobs…
It is less expensive to pay out the settlements from lawsuits than it would ever be to create and install a failsafe switchs, or a radio than never fails, or a invent and install road crossing devices that work 100% of the time and can not be defeted by the morons who drive around them and in front of trains.
Its cheaper to pay the survivor of the engineer or conductor, than it is to make railroading 100% safe.
Is this right?
Depends on weather your the survivor…but it is an accepted part of railroading…
Any business, construction worker, pilot, firefighter, police officer, loan officer, railroading…heck, even ditch
I guess you are also against the Legal system in the US where one is Presumed Innocent until Proven Guilt.
If someone, in your world, gets arrested for a violation, they must be guilty so we don’t need no stinkin’ trail.
Also in your world, after the arrest and defacto judgement of guilt then they get locked up and never let out…every transgression is a life sentance.
That is not the US Legal System, nor is it the Disciplinary system that is in effect on the railroads. Think of the Unions in the railroad Disciplinary system as being the Defense Attornies.
Sad thing, the whole incident!
everyone here is so far off base on this except for ed. There are others here that know things but wont say because of law suits and thier jobs. this brad is way off and you should do more listening instead of accusing and i do mean listen.
What has bothered me about some of the above posts on this tpoic is the bashing of our unions. Most likely this is coming from the anti labor, pro Bush supporters. I have been a UTU member for six yrs. Is my union perfect? No. Does my union always makes decisions I like and agree with? No. Do I complain & gripe about the union? of course. Would I want my union to go away? No. God forbid if the class 1’s ever become non union. I have a good paying job with good benefits and representation if I ever need it. The wages, claim payments for performing work not assigned to my train, holidays, health care were all part of collective bargining. It was simply not handed our to us by the carriers. If it wasn’t for the unions, we already would have single person crews, no job titles, a very much different pay scale and the rr could basically do whatever they want w/their work force. The issue of the NS crew will be known after all facts are presented. If the cause of the derailment was indeed directly related to the crew failing to line back the mainline switch when instructed to do so, then these men’s rr days will most likely be done for good. Lets just wait until the facts are known, quit jumping to pre judgements and stop the union bashing.
It seems as if there is a lot of debate in this thread about weather or not the train crew deservied to be fired/… Interesting. . … . . since I don’t know the details I can’t determine wather or not they should be fired. It seems to me it’s SOP for a railroad to fire a train crew in which their train derailed and killed people, injured people, leaked harmfull contaminates, destroyed millions of dollars in railroad and customer property.
However, If I were handeling the situation I would look at all the details as to why the accident occured, and what factors were involved. This way I could be fair and just in rueling my decision weather to fire them or not. Because, to me fireing someone is puts a hugh upseat in someone’s career in which they can’t find another job since they got fired from another. Espually, in the rail industry.
Also what strikes me as weird is that each member of the train crew had 25yrs experience to my understanding, why would they mismanage their train ???// With all that experienc it seems weird that they would do that. hummmmmmmm. . . … . . interesting.
ed, I guess I don’t know enough about your profession then, I will just have to do what the rest of us not in the industry have to do, (LIVE WITH IT) thanks for the info though. And I hope that this doesn’t happen again in the future.
Brad