BaltACD Euclid BaltACD Who but NS should have hired the firm to do the monitoring? Why on earth wouldn't the Goverment hire the scientists needed to do the tesing? This is way too sensitive to hire any private contractor to have the last word on whether the site is safe. There are endless reasons for private contractors to cheat, especially when the question of the outcome is so loaded. They have an incentive to cheat merely if it makes their job easier. They also might cheat if they know that telling the customer what they want to hear creates new work prospects in the future. Which government? US? Ohio? East Palestine?
Euclid BaltACD Who but NS should have hired the firm to do the monitoring? Why on earth wouldn't the Goverment hire the scientists needed to do the tesing? This is way too sensitive to hire any private contractor to have the last word on whether the site is safe. There are endless reasons for private contractors to cheat, especially when the question of the outcome is so loaded. They have an incentive to cheat merely if it makes their job easier. They also might cheat if they know that telling the customer what they want to hear creates new work prospects in the future.
BaltACD Who but NS should have hired the firm to do the monitoring?
Why on earth wouldn't the Goverment hire the scientists needed to do the tesing?
This is way too sensitive to hire any private contractor to have the last word on whether the site is safe. There are endless reasons for private contractors to cheat, especially when the question of the outcome is so loaded. They have an incentive to cheat merely if it makes their job easier. They also might cheat if they know that telling the customer what they want to hear creates new work prospects in the future.
Which government? US? Ohio? East Palestine?
The U.S. Government. I just expected that they would be doing all the testing since the EPA came in and announced that they would be handling the clean-up. Obviously they are very concerned about the chemical burn-off that was done. So it is mind boggling that they would defer to NS to tell the residents whether the site was safe to live in.
This is the mother of all conflicts of interest.
EuclidWhy on earth wouldn't the Government hire the scientists needed to do the testing?
What I'm seeing is that both federal and state EPA's are on scene and doing monitoring. Sounds like this outfit was hired to do spot checks - houses, etc.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDWho but NS should have hired the firm to do the monitoring?
blue streak 1NS certainly tries to prove it is completely oblivious to the term " public peception " This may be purely innocent but why in the world hire the company doing testing? NS management must be tone deft ? How many more mis steps is it going to do ? Norfolk Southern hired the firm testing air in East Palestine homes. Experts warn the checks are lacking | Ohio train derailment | The Guardian
Norfolk Southern hired the firm testing air in East Palestine homes. Experts warn the checks are lacking | Ohio train derailment | The Guardian
Who but NS should have hired the firm to do the monitoring? If the allegation is that in hiring the firm, NS has a hand in determining the results - then that could be considered DEFAMATION of the integrity of the firm that was hired. Firms doing such testing are dependent upon their integrity to be able to continue in business.
Does 'The Guardian' want to hire the firm?
The following is both alarmist and paranoid. But it also reveals the emotional collateral damage inflicted on the local population, from this event.
Indeed, who will want to move there anytime soon? Growth is sure to flatline, and home values won't be improving anytime soon
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/aches-rashes-fear-trauma-remains-after-ohio-derailment-97787787
NS certainly tries to prove it is completely oblivious to the term " public perception " This may be purely innocent but why in the world hire the company doing testing? NS management must be tone deft ? How many more mis steps is it going to do ?
BaltACD ns145 tree68 CSX Robert No injuries, no road closures, no hazmat involved - normally wouldn't even be in the news. Absolutely correct. But, enquiring minds want to know... NS has to be talking to some high powered PR firm on how to rebuild their corporate image. They are taking an absolute beating. And Robert Claytor has to be turning in his grave over the news that the NTSB is going to investigate the safety culture at Norfolk Southern. NS won the gold Harriman safety award so many years in a row that people lost count. How the mighty have fallen. The year the CSX was in position to win the Harriman Award instead of NS - the award was retired.
ns145 tree68 CSX Robert No injuries, no road closures, no hazmat involved - normally wouldn't even be in the news. Absolutely correct. But, enquiring minds want to know... NS has to be talking to some high powered PR firm on how to rebuild their corporate image. They are taking an absolute beating. And Robert Claytor has to be turning in his grave over the news that the NTSB is going to investigate the safety culture at Norfolk Southern. NS won the gold Harriman safety award so many years in a row that people lost count. How the mighty have fallen.
tree68 CSX Robert No injuries, no road closures, no hazmat involved - normally wouldn't even be in the news. Absolutely correct.
CSX Robert No injuries, no road closures, no hazmat involved - normally wouldn't even be in the news.
Absolutely correct.
But, enquiring minds want to know...
NS has to be talking to some high powered PR firm on how to rebuild their corporate image. They are taking an absolute beating. And Robert Claytor has to be turning in his grave over the news that the NTSB is going to investigate the safety culture at Norfolk Southern. NS won the gold Harriman safety award so many years in a row that people lost count. How the mighty have fallen.
The year the CSX was in position to win the Harriman Award instead of NS - the award was retired.
As the Church Lady on SNL used to say, "How conVENient!".
The quantity of derailments is insignificant compared to the perceived danger of just one very serious derailment. And that meter has gone off the chart with East Palestine. The public information and media marketing alone will be devastating to the railroad business image. And that will have a real cost as it drives new regulations.
CSX RobertNo injuries, no road closures, no hazmat involved - normally wouldn't even be in the news.
tree68Aaaaand, NS puts another one on the ground in Alabama. https://abc3340.com/news/local/norfolk-southern-train-derails-in-calhoun-county-tracks-railroad-railway-crash-palestine-chemical-cleanup-recovery?fbclid=IwAR3naSAuRhb9EFr3glH6xOB1uIXAK8qgyqUTNGJoXblDD4vrftM6PAq7vaY
No injuries, no road closures, no hazmat involved - normally wouldn't even be in the news.
mudchickenHas the rule of threes now gone over to CSX?
I think NS has started a new string of three of their own...
USA TodayAt 4:51 a.m. Wednesday, an empty coal train hit a rockslide near Sandstone, an unincorporated community in southern West Virginia, causing all four of the train's locomotives and nine empty coal cars to derail and catch fire, the transport company CSX Transportation said in a statement.
It is tough to defend against rockslides!
With concrete ties, fasteners when damaged destroy any future tie life. You can't dap, adze or shove a spike, lag screw or pin in another tieplate hole. Game over.
Concrete ties also beat the crap out of the subgrade. Wood ties cushion the blow a little.
Waiting to hear the WV local political sleaze say the CSX derailment is their fault. ... The yellow press and the newsworkers will distort the facts on that one.
Has the rule of threes now gone over to CSX?
BaltACDPolitical grandstanding or not. The scuttlebutt within the industry had NS playing fast and lose with any number of safety practices. Not being on NS, how true or false the scuttlebutt is is open to question.
Legends, scuttlebutt, and conspiracy theories almost always have some element of truth to them.
Aaaaand, NS puts another one on the ground in Alabama.
https://abc3340.com/news/local/norfolk-southern-train-derails-in-calhoun-county-tracks-railroad-railway-crash-palestine-chemical-cleanup-recovery?fbclid=IwAR3naSAuRhb9EFr3glH6xOB1uIXAK8qgyqUTNGJoXblDD4vrftM6PAq7vaY
Political grandstanding or not. The scuttlebutt within the industry had NS playing fast and lose with any number of safety practices. Not being on NS, how true or false the scuttlebutt is is open to question.
BaltACDNS Safety Culture being called into question https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/us-probes-norfolk-southern-culture-after-string-of-incidents-1
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/us-probes-norfolk-southern-culture-after-string-of-incidents-1
Much the same as the Canadian TCS can be relied on to mention any paper or incidental violations they find, and report them as such, whether or not they had any bearing on the accident or even on practical safety.
Concrete ties are prestressed/posttensioned for high strength. Concrete has reasonable compressive strength but giving it much tensile strength (while possible -- google the concrete bottle caps) is not cost effective and, in railroad service, still has the problem of brittle failure under shock and resonance.
The flange on a derailed wheelset neatly cracks or crumbles the center of the tie, and relieves the prestress that gives the tie its strength and gauge authority. While in theory you could pull the tie, put it in a jig, water-blast the contacts, pull tension on the tendons and tremie the broken sections with high-performance concrete... that's not cost-efficient vs. the alternative of just putting in new ones from stock.
BaltACD adkrr64 jeffhergert (Wood ties. Had they been concrete it would've been a different story.) Jeff Can you elaborate on this? Would there have been more damage to the ties because they were concrete, or is it the concrete ties would have made the event worse? Concrete breaks and when impacted by wheel flanges and the ties lose structural integrity and have to be replaced. Wood ties can withstand being run over by wheels, they will show evidence of the wheel marks, however, they retain the the strength to perform the job they were installed for.
adkrr64 jeffhergert (Wood ties. Had they been concrete it would've been a different story.) Jeff Can you elaborate on this? Would there have been more damage to the ties because they were concrete, or is it the concrete ties would have made the event worse?
jeffhergert (Wood ties. Had they been concrete it would've been a different story.) Jeff
(Wood ties. Had they been concrete it would've been a different story.)
Jeff
Can you elaborate on this? Would there have been more damage to the ties because they were concrete, or is it the concrete ties would have made the event worse?
Concrete breaks and when impacted by wheel flanges and the ties lose structural integrity and have to be replaced. Wood ties can withstand being run over by wheels, they will show evidence of the wheel marks, however, they retain the the strength to perform the job they were installed for.
Balt's right. A few years ago a train derailed one wheel. It was dragged for about a mile over recently installed concrete ties. They had to replace all those ties the wheel passed over.
Oh BTW, that train didn't pile up.
Back in the days of cabooses, the rear trainmen were to look back at the ties every so often. To look for signs of a derailed car. I read of one account of the trainmen receiving some "brownies" for not catching the tell-tale signs of a derailed wheel. That one did end up in a pile up of cars.
zugmann mvlandsw Waiting for the entire train to pass over the detector before giving the verbal warning delays the warning for what may be a critical amount of time. Every detector I've been over will immediately report a critical alarm before the train clears the detector.
mvlandsw Waiting for the entire train to pass over the detector before giving the verbal warning delays the warning for what may be a critical amount of time.
Every detector I've been over will immediately report a critical alarm before the train clears the detector.
Our detectors will give a defect tone and message, "Defect detected." It won't give type of defect, location or side of train until the train has either stopped or cleared the detector.
For detectors that check for multiple items, the instructions are to clear the detector before stopping. For dragging equipment detectors only, to stop immediately. Most of our block signal locations on track with concrete ties have been outfitted with dragging equipment detectors..
To check a hot box, under certain conditions, the conductor can be dropped off and the suspected axle pulled up to him. Hot wheels can always be pulled up to the conductor. Dragging equipment can never be pulled up to the conductor.
The following happened back when I was still a conductor. At the time the main track across most of Iowa was still current of traffic. One day we were wrong maining around MOW work between Bertram, just east of Cedar Rapids - I don't remember exactly where it began, to Mechanicsville. Mickeyville, has it's called, had and still has a hot box detector. Back then there were no wayside block signals, everything was ATC/cab signal with the current of traffic.
Our train was the last of about 3 or 4 that was fleeted wrong main. This meant that the ATC was cut out during the time on the wrong main. At Mickeyville, where we would cross back over, there was an ATC test loop to retest the ATC. Approaching the loop we would cut in the ATC, the loop energizes the clear on the cab signal. Leaving the loop, the signal drops to restricting and is supposed to give a penalty brake application. All this meant stopping on the detector.
All the trains ahead of us received defect tones for a hot box once they started pulling again. All trains checked out the reported defects. All were false alarms caused by the heat from the heavy braking and probably stopping on the detector.
We go through the same cutting in the ATC, stop and get a defect warning. I get off and the engineer pulls the indicated axle up to me. I don't find anything on that one so start checking the 20 axles each way and side from the indicated one. I start walking along, bending over with my temp stick checking the bearings on each axle of that first car. The next car I get to I'm ready to check the bearing but there isn't one. You can see how the metal on the axle twisted when the bearing seized up and then came off.
Our alarm had been a real one. Long story short, the Beverly car men had to come out and change out the wheel set right on the main line. Fortunately, we had cleared the crossover by then, the car was leaning but away from the other main track so that westbound traffic could move. Another fortunate thing was that the car was stopped just off a crossing, but where a cable gate had been installed in the fence line. The car men just drove right up to the car, making the change out that much easier.
I was able to see much of the action of changing out the wheels, but not the entire process. We were relieved due to HOS before it was completed. We never heard anything more about what happened. They had just had a tie gang, the one that had moved further down, replace ties where we were. No ties were damaged. (Wood ties. Had they been concrete it would've been a different story.) For many years, that twisted off bearing sat in the weeds along the ROW where it had seized up. A reminder every time I went past that location.
mvlandsw After the HBD detected the hot bearing it waited until the rest of the train had passed over it before transmitting it's report of the defect over the radio.
Incorrect. Here's the location of the dectector: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8356758,-80.5387967,135m/data=!3m1!1e3
The crew got the warning before the derailment and the derailment was less than a mile east of there, so clearly the warning came and the derailment occured before the train was completely past the detector.
BaltACDI wonder about attaching a RFID car reader for each defect detector - Detector can then announce the Car Initial and Number of the offending car - inspection data (whatever functions the particular detector is measuring) can be appended to the car's data record in the carriers car and train movement data base and data trends on any particular car could flag it when necessary.
I know at least the one detector near me does that. Says the Car ID and number over the radio. And even if it didn't the people in the radio will contact you pretty right quick and tell you.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
NS Safety Culture being called into question
jeffhergert That sounds about right. I don't have any data in front of me, but my impression from my rail industry years is that most railroad fatalities are from things like grade crossing accidents and trespassers, not derailments or haz mat releases. Falcon48 Let me try to put the East Palestine rail accident into a little perspective. According to the National Safety Council, in 2020 (the most recent year available on the NSC website) 4,965 people were killed in large truck accidents in the U.S. That's more than the entire population of East Palestine (4,718 in 2021). In contrast, there were 744 U.S. railroad fatalities in 2020. In other words, large truck fatalities were over 6 times the number of rail fatalities. Guess truck accidents don't matter as much to the current Transportation Secretary as a good photo op. I caught a news snippet where the head of the NTSB said rail was still safer then trucks to transport hazmat. A news item I came across on the news feed on my internet home page had statistics for the number of derailments for a period of years, ending with I think 2021. I don't remember the exact length of time. It gave the number of people killed by derailing trains. It averaged to be about 4 per year. Jeff
That sounds about right. I don't have any data in front of me, but my impression from my rail industry years is that most railroad fatalities are from things like grade crossing accidents and trespassers, not derailments or haz mat releases.
Falcon48 Let me try to put the East Palestine rail accident into a little perspective. According to the National Safety Council, in 2020 (the most recent year available on the NSC website) 4,965 people were killed in large truck accidents in the U.S. That's more than the entire population of East Palestine (4,718 in 2021). In contrast, there were 744 U.S. railroad fatalities in 2020. In other words, large truck fatalities were over 6 times the number of rail fatalities. Guess truck accidents don't matter as much to the current Transportation Secretary as a good photo op.
Let me try to put the East Palestine rail accident into a little perspective. According to the National Safety Council, in 2020 (the most recent year available on the NSC website) 4,965 people were killed in large truck accidents in the U.S. That's more than the entire population of East Palestine (4,718 in 2021). In contrast, there were 744 U.S. railroad fatalities in 2020. In other words, large truck fatalities were over 6 times the number of rail fatalities. Guess truck accidents don't matter as much to the current Transportation Secretary as a good photo op.
I caught a news snippet where the head of the NTSB said rail was still safer then trucks to transport hazmat.
A news item I came across on the news feed on my internet home page had statistics for the number of derailments for a period of years, ending with I think 2021. I don't remember the exact length of time. It gave the number of people killed by derailing trains. It averaged to be about 4 per year.
I wonder about attaching a RFID car reader for each defect detector - Detector can then announce the Car Initial and Number of the offending car - inspection data (whatever functions the particular detector is measuring) can be appended to the car's data record in the carriers car and train movement data base and data trends on any particular car could flag it when necessary.
When I retired, CSX was appending WILD data that could be searched against the car and train movement data base, what has happend in the following six years, I don't know.
mvlandswWaiting for the entire train to pass over the detector before giving the verbal warning delays the warning for what may be a critical amount of time.
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