Railroad Safety

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

I know and appreciate, that a lot of the railroaders on our forum stress how important safety is on the railroad. I’m about 1/3 through what’s turning out to be a pretty good book- The White Cascade- The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America’s Deadliest Avalanch. In describing some of the railroader’s life back then (1910 and before) the author lists some chilling things about safety.

“Some of the busier rail yards in the American system, at least in the 1870’s, were virtual slaughterhouses, seeing three to five men killed per week.” Is this an exaggeration? Where there any big yards that lost 150 to 250 men killed per year?

“Even as late as 1907, one out of every eight trainmen suffered serious injury every year.” Does that high of a rate seem plausible?

In the past 100-150 years, who or what deserves credit for today’s train safety being lightyears ahead of what it used to be?

2

Singley, George Westinghouse probably had the biggest impact with the air brake. Following that, it was the knuckle coupler and interlocking signalling. And those statistics, they’re real. That’s why the rise in unions in railroading. And curiously, too, in insurance conmpanies. Following the fire companies’ endorsements and development of insurance companies, railroad workers followed suit

3

Janney automatic coupler replacing the link-and-pin did the most to improve safety in the yards.

Next, the Railway Safety Appliance Act so that trainmen could depend on steps and grab irons being solid and secure when they went to swing aboard, and the hand brakes to work when tightened up, etc.

Air brakes and interlockings, telegraph, etc. improved safety more out on the road than in the yards.

Popular and cynical legend has it that the way to tell experienced trainmen when hiring back then was to have them hold up their hands - if they were missing fingers, that was thought to be proof of their experience and lessons learned the hard way, etc.

  • Paul North.
4

Did the railroads of way back when actively contribute to improving safety?

5

I’m gonna stick my neck out here and say that the railroads were dragged into safety kicking and screaming. Safety costs money. Money spent on safety doesn’t go into the investor’s pockets, and we know where goes line of thinking goes…

My impression over years of various readings is that the railroads considered their workers expendable - a concept held by many industries of the time. It was far cheaper to simply replace a deceased worker than it was to implement safety procedures and appliances. It did take the unions to bring safety to the table, although one could argue that social pressures probably would have eventually had the same effect.

Ironically, inventions like the Janney couple and air brakes probably ended up improving the railroad’s bottom line, but at the time, you had to deal with opinions like that of Commodore Vanderbilt - “You propose to stop my trains with wind?”

6

Not so much legend or myth, we still have quite a few guys missing one or two fingers and a lot of toes.

Cars have a nasty habit of creeping back on you real quite like, especially when your opening a knuckle.

Hence the rule that you have to have a full car length of space between cars before going in between.

Most of the safety rules we have are rules that were created in a reactive manner…someone or several guys have to get killed or maimed before a safety rules is put in place…pro active rule making is not the railroads style.

One of the reasons the FRA was created was not to make rules, but to force the railroads to follow the rules they, the railroad, created.

That’s one of the FRAs main functions today, making the carriers follow their own rules.

Add in the liability issue, and you can see why railroads want to get away from FELA and go to a workers comp system…lots cheaper to simply buy off the dead guys survivors or pay a set cost for a foot or arm that be forced to pay punitive damages for not fixing a problem or enforcing a safety rule.

Look at it this way…

You have a unit grain train that will pay you, the carrier, a bonus on top of your normal charges if you get it to the load out elevator and turned, headed back to the point of origin, in under 12 hours.

Smack dab in the middle of the train is a hopper with a bad order side ladder.

Cutting the bad order out means you wont have time to turn the train under the 12 hour time limit.

With workers comp, if a train man climbs the ladder and slips, loses a foot, the carrier is out $8000.00 or whatever the current pay out is.

(figure is a guess for illustrative purpose only, not to be considered actual damages)

Think the carrier will risk it?

Sure, the car is in the middle of the train, and odds are no one is going to have to ride the car.

So send the train on its way, and worry about the bad side ladder a different day.