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April 2022 a locomotive engineer wrote an open letter to the STB about the dangers of Precision Scheduled Railroad trains that are so long radio communication d

April 2022 a locomotive engineer wrote an open letter to the STB about the dangers of Precision Scheduled Railroad trains that are so long radio communication doesn’t even reach both ends. A lot of armchair experts on here wrote him off when it was posted to hn. I worked with a former locomotive engineer at the time who echoed the concerns reported here. He left the industry after about 10 years because of the grueling schedule and conditions. It is interesting and alarming how it is essentially an open secret among industry workers that trains are run such that they are always in an elevated risk of derailment and danger. https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/it-is-getting-worse-people-are-leaving/ https://www.railwayage.com/regulatory/it-is-getting-worse-pe...

ChickenNugger 4y ago
>April 2022 a locomotive engineer wrote an open letter to the STB about the dangers of Precision Scheduled Railroad trains that are so long radio communication doesn’t even reach both ends. It's not just purely length. A long train can easily have mountains in between the ends.
gorgoiler 4y ago
These trains are over 3 miles long. This is to amortise the overhead of staffing? The locomotives and their cost scale linearly with the train, but the engineers do not?
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  that's part of it but not the main reason. the main reason is that if you make the cargo train too big to fit into the pull off on single tracked rail, then passenger trains have to yield to the cargo trains.
  - tremon 4y ago
    I have a grudging admiration for the sociopath that came up with that solution. Still, it has an easy fix: make it illegal to run a train that does not fit into the pull off.
mikrotikker 4y ago
LeMegantic should have been a wakeup but nope... Gotta make a few extra bucks for the hedgies
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  Lac Megantic.
  - mikrotikker 4y ago
    Thank you.
Georgelemental 4y ago
Yeah, this is why it was "impossible" to give railroad workers sick leave. It would be incompatible with PSR, and scrapping PSR would mean gasp lower short-term profits for shareholders!

ChickenNugger 4y ago

>April 2022 a locomotive engineer wrote an open letter to the STB about the dangers of Precision Scheduled Railroad trains that are so long radio communication doesn’t even reach both ends. It's not just purely length. A long train can easily have mountains in between the ends.

gorgoiler 4y ago

These trains are over 3 miles long. This is to amortise the overhead of staffing? The locomotives and their cost scale linearly with the train, but the engineers do not?

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
that's part of it but not the main reason. the main reason is that if you make the cargo train too big to fit into the pull off on single tracked rail, then passenger trains have to yield to the cargo trains.
- tremon 4y ago
  I have a grudging admiration for the sociopath that came up with that solution. Still, it has an easy fix: make it illegal to run a train that does not fit into the pull off.

mikrotikker 4y ago

LeMegantic should have been a wakeup but nope... Gotta make a few extra bucks for the hedgies

ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
Lac Megantic.
- mikrotikker 4y ago
  Thank you.

Georgelemental 4y ago

Yeah, this is why it was "impossible" to give railroad workers sick leave. It would be incompatible with PSR, and scrapping PSR would mean gasp lower short-term profits for shareholders!