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Here is one safety alert issued by the AAR directly quoted:   Safety Notice: AAR Issues Safety Alert on Rail Car Tampering On May 4, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) issued the following alert to its members: “AAR has been notified by Exxon-Mobil that it recently received a hopper car at its Baton Rouge, Louisiana facility that had a razor blade strategically placed in the eye of the air brake release rod. Fortunately the site technician immediately removed the razor blade and no harm was done to anyone at that facility. As you will recognize, this type of vandalism may have been perpetrated on multiple railcars that can arrive at numerous facilities across the country. Therefore, AAR recommends that this notice be given wide spread distribution, particularly to all employees who routinely come in contact with rail cars of any type. Employees should be advised to inspect not only air brake release rods for such traps, but also safety appliances, coupler operating levers, angle cocks and any other surfaces which employees may contact. This is one of a number of similar incidents that have been discovered in recent years.”   I have no reason to doubt what members have posted here about their direct experiences with this issue.  But to understand the problem, it would be helpful to know the actual extent of it.  Clearly the AAR and other authorities have documentation of all of these incidents, but I do not find that information on the Internet.   Is this information being made public, and if it is, how can it be accessed? Without conveying the full problem, this safety alert has limited impact.  After all, this national alert is about ONE razor blade on ONE freight car.  The AAR is correct about the possibility of this type of vandalism being perpetrated on multiple railcars across the country.  However, one could make this assertion conceptually with no actual incidents having occurred.  So it would be nice to know how much of this alert is being predicted and how much has actually occurred.
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