BIG FAILURE - who or what to be determined
Evolving pretty quick. MoW ‘misaligned’ crossover switch and then told 1032’s crew they were clear to pass the local.
As at Cayce… restricted speed would not have permitted this.
Railroading is never a one man operation. I takes EVERYBODY doing what IS REQUIRED when it is REQUIRED.
I have no knowledge of what kind of work was transpiring at Folkston.
The scene
Of course it would have. So would an employee doing their job correctly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHo12vq-K4U
You can hear the crew dump the train at the 46 second mark, 18 seconds before it hit.
Video indicates I032 was moving past the camera location at near track speed - Looks like I032 nowadays is a combination of the Juice Train and the Q032 Intermodal train of the old operating plan.
At around 9 minutes into this Virtual Railfan grab bag, better video of things.
What happened to the second crew members? The first crew reported to the dispatcher that they were going to check and report back. Nothing has been said about them.
The NTSB Preliminary report -
The Switchtender ???
Is it the term “switch-tender” or the fact that an operating craft individual could fail a a simple assigned task (or something else?)…
Have seen when an operating craft person supposebly out there to protect us as a flagman because of a union agreement was a brutal letdown considerably more than once. (and to be fair, have seen the polar opposite as well.) … the thing here is that person’s failure got somebody hurt and derailed/destroyed track and material that should not been touched.
Switchtender is considered to be a ‘menial task’ job that ANY Conductor on the extra board is qualified to fill regardless of the the location. The Switchtenders responsibilities at Folkston are more involved than they are at most locations where switchtenders are used in conjunction to Signal Suspensions.
Back in the day, men hired on into what were effectively ‘apprentice’ type positions and in working those positions over time, learned what was necessary to get ‘promoted’ to Conductor. In the 21st Century people are hired off the street, run through a ‘training program’ for six to eight weeks and graduated to work their first ‘unsupervised’ day as a Conductor - with that ‘qualified’ Conductor by title being presumed qualified to handle any of the menial sub jobs such as
Dual-control power opersted switches have two different levers attached to the mechanism. A short lever, which is used to take the power off of the switch machine (it is usually marked on one side “Power” or “Motor” and on the other side “Hand”). Also a long lever which is the one that acutally moves the switch points when the short handle is in “Hand” position. Quite often, because of the way these switch machines operate, the long handle will have to be thrown back and forth several times in order to move the switch points from normal to reverse or vice versa. It is entirely possible (like BaltACD I have no way of knowing) that the Switchtender / Conductor, possibly due to inexperience, only threw the handle once. Like he would have done on any ordinary hand throw switch. However the switch points might not have moved at all. And if he did not visualy inspect them (again, maybe inexperience) he may have reported the switch lined for the Nahunta Sub when in fact it was not.
Pure speculation on my part.
One thing we drill into our new volunteers is to verify the points before and after throwing a switch.
Inexperience might be a factor, especially if said conductor hasn’t thrown a lot of switches, or at least of this type.
From the TOP on down - a switchtender is viewed as a warm body that has virtually no responsibility - UNTIL SOMETHING GOES WRONG. And here we are.
Aren’t SPAFs and their procedures involved here… as they were at Cayce?
No - Switchtender is throwing switches at the direct instruction of the Train Dispatcher.
SPAF’s are for employees that are part of train crews and are utilzing Main Track switches in performing their work duties servicing industries and other uses of Main Track switches.
Even if SPAF was being used, the Switchtender would have written the switches as instructed - not as actually lined - seeing that the Switchtender THOUGHT he had lined the route that the Train Dispatcher instructed him to do.