Yet More CSX 'Buffoonery'!

[Anonymous]

How much of this CSX buffoonery can this country, and Rail-Road industry stand? Quite a bit I would say if these continuing escapades of this 'R.R.' are allowed to keep re-occurring as they seem to be. Where is the accountability on behalf of this 'R.R.'? They have yet to account for what really happened on the previous 'run-away'. This most recent event near Rochester is unbelievable! Why didn't the crew secure the 40 plus car train before cutting away the 'power'? Especially on a 1% grade! And thinking that they could stop this run-away with 'light power' without the brake hose connected. There are enough safety rules etc. on the different R.R.'s to now cover any and all circumstances that may occur. My 3 ring binder rule and safety book is now at least 6 inches thick, and may somehow be even more so after this rediculous occurance...Hommie

[Anonymous]

Look what the railroads are hireing. They know they cant get fired.

[thirdrail1]

Don't you know that once they join the union they can do no wrong? Union memebership gives them infinite wisdom and judgement. Anything that happens is always the management's fault.

[Anonymous]

Gregg...in these circumstances I have to agree with you. As you and I have occasionally differed on Union business, I still recognise the unmistakeable fact that there is not enough employee accountability, and that the Union's are largely responsible. What kind of employee has more lives than any cat? A R.R. employee of course!

[Anonymous]

Gregg...in these circumstances I have to agree with you. As you and I have occasionally differed on Union business, I still recognise the unmistakeable fact that there is not enough employee accountability, and that the Union's are largely responsible. What kind of employee has more lives than any cat? A R.R. employee of course!

[Anonymous]

Gregg, spoken like a true mangement type. When was the last time you ran a train?

Where did you obtain such vast railroading knowledge? You are very quick to blame the crew. Do you have any idea what the working condition are for road crews?

You also lay the blame on the unions. Did you know that the railways have a very high turnover rate for employees? That's because they FIRE men for rule violations! Every day our jobs are threatened by the company for not wanting to work 11 or 12 hours per day sometimes 7 days a week on the road! Why don't you try that?

The companies also cut cost by not maintaining equipment. This could also be the cause of this runaway. Think before you say anything about these incidents. Also the details were sketchy, how long were the cars left there? Were handbrakes applied?

[Anonymous]

Jim why do the railroads want to hire college graduates.I know you dont have to be smart to be a brakeman.Working 7 days in all kinds of weather being away from home.If i had a college education i sure would not work uncofortable.

[thirdrail1]

Just where did you get the idea that I blamed the crew?? You must be better at reading what I say than I am in writing it. You say I blame the unions. Well, your attitude saying I blamed the crew is exactly and precisely why I DO blame the unions. Neither you nor I know enough about the circumstances to know who is at fault, but you, in your typical union attitude, are saying that I blame the crew, which means, perforce, that you hold them blameless. Yes, I spent my entire railroad career in management, and have never operated a Diesel locomotive. But, I have managed to secure a multimillion dollar contract that kept several union crews employed for over 15 years. My part was always to find the source of traffic and the money it paid so that everyone else could earn a living. When you're selling on this level, you'd better know one helluva lot about just what you are selling.

[wabash1]

every rule violation that i have seen that caused a mishap was due to the crew being ole heads. men with 25 years of service. the idea they have is i been railroading for years and i aint changing now for collage educated idiots who dont know what is going on or for the new guys wanting to do rule compliance. guys getting run over, cars rolling into engines ripping open fuel tanks. derailments . all i can say is that when im on the engine i hope i dont get ran into by the cut of cars we cut away from and have all that paper work to do. plus the drug test. in this day of railroading it should be common sense to cover your butt. then you dont haft to worry about being fired. im against management but i also like my job and i wont short cut their rules... its their ball its thier bats and their game play by it and if it screws up its their baby. i love it when they have nobody to blame but themselves. makes them humble.

[Anonymous]

What do you mean by "you don't have to be smart to be a brakeman"?

The railroads hire college grads to run the company, not to run trains. Just because you have a college education and work in an office doesn't make you smart either. Most entry level jobs don't pay as well as the railway does. That the only reason the majority of us are there is money!

[Anonymous]

Gregg, you have the typical railway manager's attitude. You back peddal and say I never meant that. Explain to me what this statement means "Don't you know once they join the union they can do no wrong?" or this one " Union membership gives them infinite wisdom and judgement." or " Anything that happens is mangement's fault." Who were these statement directed at? You weren't pointing the finger at the crew? It sure seemed that way to me!

In today's railway many of the mistakes are made by inexperienced crew members. With the conductor only trains in just six months these guys off the street are put in charge of a 10,000 foot train. IN the old days a conductor had many years on before being classed up. Which made for safer train operation because many of the rules became second nature.

So, Gregg maybe management is to blame. I can also tell in your posts you don't like transportation employees, that is typical of other departments.

[Anonymous]

Jim
Tell me how two crew members fell asleep long enough to blow thru a red and rear end the back of another train in Mo on the UP. I understand things happen. However when crews are given 2nd and 3rd chances to get back into the cab of a 10K to 16K ton train again. I seriously question how this can happen. Can you help me with this one. As far as training, I agree with you. Crews need more time to get experience.

Don

[thirdrail1]

I am now retired, but I worked for a union railroad small enough to know everyone that worked for the company. From what I saw there and at the non-union short line I worked for before that, it is maybe 5 percent of the employees that have 90 percent of the accidents and incidents. The union does not serve the 95 percent of its membership that works safely by protecting the 5 percent that make their job more dangerous. That is what I was referring to about imparting infinite wisdom - that the union rep would immediately state that the crew could not possibly have done anything wrong. By the way, I agree 100 percent that the major railroads are putting crews out there with far too little training and experience - but that problem bagan 50 years ago when management started reducing the size of the work force and physical plant, so that instead of a forty year career and less than three percent of the work force retiring each year, the railroads are faced with a rapidly aging work force being forced to try to train what should have been a decade's worth of new hires in a year or two.

[Anonymous]

Don, how they feel asleep? I wouldn't know. I can't answer for what happened there. If they blew a red then there is no excuse for that. I am not familiar with the work rules on the UP. I know at CN we can book rest after ten hours of work. Then they put a fresh crew on the train.

I work from Toronto to Buffalo and change off with both NS and CSX crews And they tell me that they somtimes wait at the away from home terminal for up to 50 hours for a call. At CN after 14 hours they have to deadhead us home. I think that with that kind of layover it would be hard to get the proper rest required to work long hours.

[Anonymous]

Jim
Sounds like you have it a little better on CN. I have rode with crews before doing locomotive check rides. I don't see how they do it. I think the alerter saves a lot of lifes. By the way that wreck I talked about in the previous message on the UP, the lead locomotive did not an alerter.

Don L.

[Anonymous]

Don
Are you sure that she fell asleep? The locomotive she was in was either an SD90 Mac or an AC6000. Both should have been equiped with an alerter, or should not have been in service as the lead unit. If this is true, it is both the railroad's and the crew's fault. I know how easy it is to fall asleep at the throttle, but the alerter helps a lot, and has surely saved many lives.

Brian

[PaulWWoodring]

I'm a T&E employee for said carrier and asked a trainmaster about the Rochester wreck last week. The word from management is that the crew "bottled" the air, that is they closed both angle cocks after taking a full-service reduction off the brake pipe, and then cut-away, not setting any handbrakes to save time on recoupling and pumping the air back up in cold weather. The car reservoirs then released enough air into the system to initiate a release of the brakes and they rolled into the engine, the engineer not being able to stop them with just the independent. It's rare, but as little as a 2 lb. increase in brake pipe pressure can initiate a brake release. The rules clearly state that bottling the air is a big no-no, and you are not supposed to depend on the emergency brakes to hold cars not coupled to an engine. Fairly common is cutting away briefly without setting handbrakes to make a set-off/pick-up on line-of-road. In any event, a word to the wise for any other CSX employees reading this - supervision is going to be efficiency testing for these things for awhile.

The crew involved had about 2 years each, so they came through the new training program, like I did.
I have believed that the new way of training transportation employees on an accelerated basis could lead to dangerous things happening, but this particular incident was probably caused by them doing what they had seen "old heads" do before, and get away with. Still, some of the others are right, that the old "apprentice" type of training has it's merits, and I think that a major reason railroads like hiring people with at least some college or a degree, like me, is that they might be a little faster in absorbing all that is being thrown at them in a very short period of time. I went from essentially being off the street (although with a railfan and Amtrak OBS background) through conductor training and engineer school to having a federal card in less than two years. Yes, I feel that I was thrown to the wolves in a lot of ways, but I think I am finally getting to the point of being fairly competent. I am grateful that no critical incidents have happened around me yet. I don't know if my level of experience would have prepared me to react properly, or in time to prevent a disaster. I think CSX is making a mistake in not having a locomotive simulator at it's engineer school, relying instead totally on the field training part of engineer training to give students behind the throttle experience. I think you really need the opportunity to try to prevent a "wreck" on a simulator that no training engineer would dare take a chance on with a real train and a student. After all, it's their card at stake.

To address a couple of other comments:

Unions do sometimes protect bad employees that should be fired, but we all pay the same dues, and I expect to get some kind of representation for all of that money that comes out of my check every month, just like our justice system entitles everyone to legal representation, the unions can't tell a member in good standing that they don't deserve to be represented to the fullest extent possible. Yes, some bad apples do get back, but just like the O.J. case, sometimes the guilty get away with it - for awhile.

About crew fatigue and sleep deprivation - sometimes, despite one's best efforts to be rested and ready to go, you just can't guess right on when you'll be called to work. I've gone straight to bed after a trip thinking I'll be back out in 8 hours and end up being home 18+, ready to go back to bed when the call comes. Even if you've had a reasonable amount of sleep, the human body was meant to be asleep at 3 am, so you're not going to be totally sharp at that time of day. There comes a point at which all the caffine (or alerters) in the world will not keep you awake any longer. Also, locomotive alerters do not have total consistancy as to when they will go off, it can vary anywhere between 20 sec. and 2 min., certainly enough time for disaster to strike.

Hope some of this rings true. Happy New Year.

[wabash1]

the problem i have with the statement is if they bottled air then why didnt he just bust the air with the "hot". that would have been better than trying to stop a train that aint going to stop. i been showed how to bottle the air and let it out slow to keep the retainers from sticking open but if the engineer is afforded the oppertunity to draw them down before cutting away then this wont happen either. when its cold out it dont matter its going to take awhile to pump them up. what they did was a big gamble that they lost with respect to their jobs.

[Anonymous]

Don, in Canada you have to have an alerter on the lead locomotive or you can't run. I'm surprised that the US railways are allowed to run without one when this saftey device might save lives.

[Anonymous]

Paul i like what you said the T&E should be proud to have you as an employee.The railroads have a future with people like you.Hope you help get more trucks off the highway.

[Anonymous]

Paul i like what you said the T&E should be proud to have you as an employee.The railroads have a future with people like you.Hope you help get more trucks off the highway.

[Anonymous]

Hommie,and the rest of u clowns.Take a good look at that 3 ring binder.Each and every rule in there can get you fired.When you get hired on the railroad, the management welcomes you on board,then starts trying to fire you. You and your silly cohorts, who it is quite clear have never worked for any railroad, are so quick to judge. If I and my fellow railroaders were to follow every rule, the railroads would never move any frieght.That rulebook is there to cover there *** when something goes wrong, or someone gets hurt. Then they can pull out the book to show the rule that was violated. When there comes a time when they have to many workers, the book is used to thin the workforce. If they have a shortage of workers, the rulebook is placed on the shelf. The crew you mentioned bottled the air so they could recharge it quicker. They did this because they dont understand how the breaking system works. All you need is a 1&1/2 lbs increase, and the air tanks on the cars start dumping air into the breakline to help recharge it. It is a quick release feature found on all cars today. So if just 1 car leaks air into the breakpipe,then a domino effect comes into play and all breaks will release. On a cold day, with a 100 car train, it can take over 40 min.to recharge a train w/no air in it. They were trying to save time. I would think that this was the company's fault for not making sure the men new about the break system of a train and how it works.

[Saxman]

As a manager on a Class 1 railroad, I am absolutely incensed with this reponse. I DO NOT TELL CREWS TO VIOLATE RULES. I DO NOT LOOK THE OTHER WAY in the name of moving traffic. I am sick to death of hearing: "If the company excpected us to follow the rules we would never move a train." If the crew did not understand the air brake system, there is a rule that says to talk to a supervisor that does. Responsibility for know and understanding the rules is a two way street.

I have never fired anyone. They fired themselves. This idea that as soon as your hired, the company is trying to fire is pure B.S. It is expensive to train someone. Why would a company then turn around and want to train again?

Are there managers out there who care could care less about the rules and just get the train out of my terminal? Yes! Are there crews that only care about the early quit or overtime? Yes! The point here is both sides have faults. The sitiuation will only improve when the fingers stop pointing and each "side" accepts its share of the responsibility.

[Anonymous]

Terry, I don't know any supervisiors who don't look the other way as long as the cars are getting spotted on time, but put one on the ground when kicking, look out. We kick cars everyday in front of the trainmasters and nothing is said. If we don't kick cars we will most likely be late. They don't want that so they stay silent.

The only thing I can say about bottling the air is, why do it? The longer it takes to pump off the brakes the better. Running for the quit doesn't make any sense when you put your job on the line.

Saxman, ever fire someone who got their job back? If so, then you fired them!

[Anonymous]

I wonder Terry, have you ever worked as a trainman or engineer? Or were you a manager at Burgerking before this?Maybe straight out of collage? You mean to tell me you have NEVER hiden some where to watch a crew for rule violations? You honestly think that if we were to follow every rule , we would get things done? You do know, of course, that a break test ( by the rules ) requires that a conductor or car department walk the application on BOTH SIDES of the train? The rule states that the shoes must be against every wheel. This means that when leaving a yard with a 130 car train, it would take better than 2 hours just for the break test. Tell me, have you or your buddies cut jobs,crew, but still expect the work to get done? Maybe cut off a switchman, to make a job conductor only, but not cut any of his work. Tell me, how does he switch one end a protect the other end? The ansewer is he can't, and this is understood. The track holds 90 cars and the yard master wants you shove the track in because it only has 60 cars on it, if the conductor tries to go to the rear to protect the shove, he gets yelled at for holding up the move (in a hump yard). OK,there are a few managers that don't get a hard-on for trying to fire people, maybe you are one of those, but if this is true , you are in the minority.

[Anonymous]

Hello LordGear...I never though my new 'thread' would start such a discussion. The responses are getting more and more entertaining. Name calling, no matter how benign does'nt help you make the mispellings in your argument any more compelling. I realise all to well that the GCOR is often used as a weapon against me and my fellow worker's, but that has not diminished my frustration with all of the 'collision's' we've seen in the last few week's on Class 1 R.R's. I've worked for the G.N., B.N., and now the B.N.S.F. here in the Seattle area at Interbay for 33 year's. I understand the nuances of this occupation as well as anyone. I used to 'bottle-the-air', to save time...so what,I was forced to change my way of operating just like you--if you are what you say you are. I don't smoke you know what on the job any more either. Most of these new rules are obviously created as a result of prior mishap's. As you know, using the rules is a two-way street. I'm sure you have been part of a 'rules-observance' (slow-down' right?) 'Wave-action' is what I believe you were trying as best you could to explain, and for an 'F.N.G.' you almost did a good job...Good Luck... Hommie

[Anonymous]

Hommie Yes,my spelling sucks. I'm sorry for the name calling,but it get upset with those who allways want to blame the crew. These recent collision's have more than 1 screw up, and might I add, you weren't there. I wasn't either. It could have been that these crew's weren't rested,meaning maybe 1 or more were allready up for 14 or more hours before being called to work. There are no protections for these things.The co. doesn't care,they don't ask if you are rested. I don't know every detail, I just wi***hat other's who allso don't know, not jump to the co. verson so quickly. Live long and prosper..LordGear

[Anonymous]

I've been at rr for 12 years and have yet to see them care about anything other than moving cars. When the crew office calls for a job at 1 am they know you aren't rested, but that's the nature of the beast. If we expect the college kids they hire to run the place care then we've got a long wait.

As far as rule violations go we should just do it by the book and slow it right down. The new trainmasters all have new ideas that just make us more money. They're great!

The company version is always tilted to blame the crew. The signal couldn't have displayed an improper indication. This was proven at another accident years after a collision, the company knew about it. I think it was Conrail somewhere in Pennsylvania, the signal hadn't been cleaned and the lens was covered in rust which made the signal look yellow, when it was red. This stuff happens out there,it's not all human error.

[Anonymous]

Lordgear you work for a rr.You need to pay attition to your job.Maby some of us dont work for a rr.We would do a better job than you.I know a uneducated truck driver can.They delever on time and haul more freight.Remember if you got it a truck brought it.So clowns quiet complaining and start delivering.

[Anonymous]

Hello Mr. Hoyle...you're right...the R.R.'s need to be more cognicant of on time performance. How-ever...when it comes to shear volume of ton's of freight hauled per mile, no-one on this planet haul's anything close to what one "Stack-Train' can haul. For example, one such train usually haul's 200-250 truck container's at a time. If they could just get is there a little quicker!...Take Care...Hommie