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Recall when there was an imminent Rail Workers' strike in the news? Which Congress bravely stepped in and prevented? Weren't safety issues like this part of the

Recall when there was an imminent Rail Workers' strike in the news? Which Congress bravely stepped in and prevented? Weren't safety issues like this part of the workers' complaints? There were multiple sightings of axles on fire before the accident: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/10/east-palestine-train-derailment-video-fire-axle-alert/stories/202302100070 https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/02/10/...

overthemoon 4y ago
Definitely. https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/ https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rule...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Frost1x 4y ago
I suspect we're seeing more and more of these issues due to corner cutting in various industries. Air travel has already been a tight margin industry and take at look at all the air related issues we've seen recently, from FAA systems down to mass cancelations due to infrastructure to the recent runway conflicts and accidents we've seen. Speaking from anecdotal experience, over the years this constant push for more complex and efficient work from individuals has lead to me cutting more corners than I ever wanted to and producing more questionable products and services in the name of efficiency. Hiring contract workers for some household work I've done seems to be a lot of the same as well. I think we as a society need to come to the realization that growth demands can't always be met by piling more costs and work on people. Much of that rock has been squeezed dry, we need to start looking and managing expectations based on growth from new innovative process changes, technology, or shifts in cultural expectations as far as growth goes, at least that's my opinion for whatever it's worth.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Industries like airlines and railroad have the problem where you can't cut the corners that can be tastefully and carefully cut because once upon a time someone went overboard, hands were wrung, and a law or rule was made. So then when you're squeezed you cut some corner no sane person would cut with predictable results. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that the railroad had implemented the XKCD 28hr day or something dumb like that because that was their only way to squeeze more man hours out of the month without violating the law or violating their union contracts. Edit: not to say the 28hr day is dumb
  - ruined 4y ago
    it's hard to find good news coverage of the actual details of the dispute, but it seems to be fairly basic staff reductions intended to increase margin (already historically massive) the keyword to search is "precision scheduled railroading" as that's the management term recent nymag from last year's attempted strike https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-... wsws coverage has labor complaint details https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/19/prec-f19.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/19/prec-f19.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/01/rail-a01.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/01/rail-a01.html ttd, a union publication https://ttd.org/policy/precision-scheduled-railroading-threatens-to-gut-americas-freight-rail-system/ https://ttd.org/policy/precision-scheduled-railroading-threa... https://ttd.org/policy/ttd-president-greg-regan-testifies-at-fra-hearing-in-support-of-two-person-crews/ https://ttd.org/policy/ttd-president-greg-regan-testifies-at... notably, workers are forbidden from calling in sick, and are complaining about scheduling that disregards sleep, reduced maintenance, and dangerously increased train length. railroads have laid off about 30% of staff in the last few years, and unions have struggled to achieve rules as basic as forbidding single-person crews.
    - sclarisse 4y ago
      PSR is worth some controversy but the big problem here was ordering the train to proceed after a hot-box detector found a hot axle (saying that if it’s really a problem the next one will detect it, which it did, but it was too late to stop). That’s just bypassing the safeties deliberately.
colpabar 4y ago
[flagged]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
alias_neo 4y ago
"For an overheating alert, the protocol calls for the train to stop and for the conductor to touch a waxy stick to the suspected defect to see if it melts the wax" I chuckled to myself a little at the thought of a conductor trying to get through flames to be close enough to touch the waxy stick to the flaming axle.
colpabar 4y ago
Don’t worry - norfolk southern, the company responsible, gave the town a whopping $25k to help out. Five dollars for everyone! https://finance.yahoo.com/news/norfolk-southern-giving-25-000-200000640.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/norfolk-southern-giving-25-00...
- iinnPP 4y ago
  Whoever did that should hide. It's so insulting that it must be dangerous.
  - colpabar 4y ago
    This is after they bought ten billion dollars of their own stocks last year. It’s unbelievable. They really couldn’t shell out a bit more, at least just for good PR? https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/19/while-fighting-workers-railroads-made-over-10-billion-stock-buybacks https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/19/while-fighting-...
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Honestly suspect some middle manager approved it and that's the highest they can go "immediately without approval" because $25k sounds like what you'd normally allocate for a single personal injury (someone getting hit on the head by a crossing guard or whatnot) and they didn't think what it would look like, nor pause to run it up the chain.
mschuster91 4y ago
> There were multiple sightings of axles on fire before the accident In Germany, we have these hot-box detectors as well - and if they trigger, the train is automatically stopped by dispatch. Wonder what happened in this case.
- bombcar 4y ago
  When there are human links in the safety chain, those links can fail. Here's some possible things that could have gone wrong: 1. The hotbox detectors have been malfunctioning or are miscalibrated and giving false alarms, so dispatch has started ignoring them. 2. The same but conductors have begun ignoring dispatch. 3. Dispatch missed the signal from the hotbox. 4. Conductor missed the call from dispatch, or dispatch was handling another issue elsewhere. You need things like positive train control [2673] designed to be fail-safe and without inappropriate overrides - the hotbox triggers, train doesn't stop, automatically the PTC trips and puts the train into emergency. You need to design it so that ignoring the problem results in total economic shutdown of whatever it is; many systems are setup so that ignoring the problem results in the numbers being met (until something catastrophic happens). [2673] https://railroads.dot.gov/research-development/program-areas/train-control/ptc/positive-train-control-ptc https://railroads.dot.gov/research-development/program-areas...

overthemoon 4y ago

Definitely. https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rules-before-ohio-derailment/ https://www.levernews.com/rail-companies-blocked-safety-rule...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Frost1x 4y ago

I suspect we're seeing more and more of these issues due to corner cutting in various industries. Air travel has already been a tight margin industry and take at look at all the air related issues we've seen recently, from FAA systems down to mass cancelations due to infrastructure to the recent runway conflicts and accidents we've seen. Speaking from anecdotal experience, over the years this constant push for more complex and efficient work from individuals has lead to me cutting more corners than I ever wanted to and producing more questionable products and services in the name of efficiency. Hiring contract workers for some household work I've done seems to be a lot of the same as well. I think we as a society need to come to the realization that growth demands can't always be met by piling more costs and work on people. Much of that rock has been squeezed dry, we need to start looking and managing expectations based on growth from new innovative process changes, technology, or shifts in cultural expectations as far as growth goes, at least that's my opinion for whatever it's worth.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Industries like airlines and railroad have the problem where you can't cut the corners that can be tastefully and carefully cut because once upon a time someone went overboard, hands were wrung, and a law or rule was made. So then when you're squeezed you cut some corner no sane person would cut with predictable results. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that the railroad had implemented the XKCD 28hr day or something dumb like that because that was their only way to squeeze more man hours out of the month without violating the law or violating their union contracts. Edit: not to say the 28hr day is dumb
- ruined 4y ago
  it's hard to find good news coverage of the actual details of the dispute, but it seems to be fairly basic staff reductions intended to increase margin (already historically massive) the keyword to search is "precision scheduled railroading" as that's the management term recent nymag from last year's attempted strike https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-... wsws coverage has labor complaint details https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/19/prec-f19.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/02/19/prec-f19.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/01/rail-a01.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/01/rail-a01.html ttd, a union publication https://ttd.org/policy/precision-scheduled-railroading-threatens-to-gut-americas-freight-rail-system/ https://ttd.org/policy/precision-scheduled-railroading-threa... https://ttd.org/policy/ttd-president-greg-regan-testifies-at-fra-hearing-in-support-of-two-person-crews/ https://ttd.org/policy/ttd-president-greg-regan-testifies-at... notably, workers are forbidden from calling in sick, and are complaining about scheduling that disregards sleep, reduced maintenance, and dangerously increased train length. railroads have laid off about 30% of staff in the last few years, and unions have struggled to achieve rules as basic as forbidding single-person crews.
  - sclarisse 4y ago
    PSR is worth some controversy but the big problem here was ordering the train to proceed after a hot-box detector found a hot axle (saying that if it’s really a problem the next one will detect it, which it did, but it was too late to stop). That’s just bypassing the safeties deliberately.

colpabar 4y ago

[flagged]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

alias_neo 4y ago

"For an overheating alert, the protocol calls for the train to stop and for the conductor to touch a waxy stick to the suspected defect to see if it melts the wax" I chuckled to myself a little at the thought of a conductor trying to get through flames to be close enough to touch the waxy stick to the flaming axle.

colpabar 4y ago

Don’t worry - norfolk southern, the company responsible, gave the town a whopping $25k to help out. Five dollars for everyone! https://finance.yahoo.com/news/norfolk-southern-giving-25-000-200000640.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/norfolk-southern-giving-25-00...

iinnPP 4y ago
Whoever did that should hide. It's so insulting that it must be dangerous.
- colpabar 4y ago
  This is after they bought ten billion dollars of their own stocks last year. It’s unbelievable. They really couldn’t shell out a bit more, at least just for good PR? https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/19/while-fighting-workers-railroads-made-over-10-billion-stock-buybacks https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/19/while-fighting-...
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Honestly suspect some middle manager approved it and that's the highest they can go "immediately without approval" because $25k sounds like what you'd normally allocate for a single personal injury (someone getting hit on the head by a crossing guard or whatnot) and they didn't think what it would look like, nor pause to run it up the chain.

mschuster91 4y ago

> There were multiple sightings of axles on fire before the accident In Germany, we have these hot-box detectors as well - and if they trigger, the train is automatically stopped by dispatch. Wonder what happened in this case.

bombcar 4y ago
When there are human links in the safety chain, those links can fail. Here's some possible things that could have gone wrong: 1. The hotbox detectors have been malfunctioning or are miscalibrated and giving false alarms, so dispatch has started ignoring them. 2. The same but conductors have begun ignoring dispatch. 3. Dispatch missed the signal from the hotbox. 4. Conductor missed the call from dispatch, or dispatch was handling another issue elsewhere. You need things like positive train control [2673] designed to be fail-safe and without inappropriate overrides - the hotbox triggers, train doesn't stop, automatically the PTC trips and puts the train into emergency. You need to design it so that ignoring the problem results in total economic shutdown of whatever it is; many systems are setup so that ignoring the problem results in the numbers being met (until something catastrophic happens). [2673] https://railroads.dot.gov/research-development/program-areas/train-control/ptc/positive-train-control-ptc https://railroads.dot.gov/research-development/program-areas...