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The High Price of Precision Scheduled Railroading
Author: D. B. Arthur
Date: 10-14-2023 - 15:36
Interesting reading, written by two retired railroaders.
An Anatomy of a Train Wreck
A little over a year ago, a UPRR crew hauling a double stack near the Salton Sea in California was lined into the Bertram siding. Ostensibly it was an empty siding according to dispatching logs in Omaha, NE. With tragic consequences, this action caused the death of the engineer and conductor when the train ran headlong into a string of empty stack cars that had been stored in the siding. In the 2 am darkness the crew saw nothing until it was too late and the empty stack cars sheared the cab right off of the lead locomotive.
At the time of this tragedy, I wrote in this Report that perhaps the dispatcher had inadvertently lost a 'post-it note' that had fluttered off of the console in Omaha. Initial reports claimed that it was an un-bonded siding which turned out not to be true. My snide comment was unbefitting of this tragedy, but without detailed information, my suspicion was that PSR, (Precision Scheduled Railroading) may have played a role. The doubling of train lengths and sizable cuts to the workforce can only result in a lack of durable redundancy and safety protocols. Furthermore, the stress imposed on the remaining workforce can erode effectiveness, attention and alertness.
This past month the NTSB Report on the Salton Sea tragedy was released and the details are actually worse than I might have imagined. The Bertram siding was bonded, signaled and controlled by Omaha dispatchers. The NTSB’s report shows that in the previous nine hours, the Bertram siding showed ‘occupied’ and then ‘unoccupied’ two dozen times. According to the NTSB, the empty stack cars had been sitting on the siding unmolested for more than eight months! It was the NTSB’s assessment that the close proximity to the Salton Sea had rusted the rails and wheels so severely that they intermittently failed to bond the rail.
If the Dispatcher’s board in Omaha showed the ‘false’ empty siding indication at the time the train was lined in, it should absolve the Dispatcher of any guilt. One would certainly not want to burden the Dispatcher’s conscience with the consequences of this tragedy, but a deeper look into this NTSB report provides a better understanding of what happened.
Stack Train ILISB5 was westbound from Santa Teresa, NM to Long Beach, CA. It had passed the Bertram siding at about 9 pm on September 7th, 2022 and traveled another forty miles where ‘helper units’ were added to the rear at Myoma, CA for the trip to Long Beach. When the train reached West Palm Springs, the Dispatcher radioed the train telling the crew that Long Beach had no room for the train and that the ‘helper units’ on the rear should drag the train back to the Bertram siding.
The NTSB report acknowledges that the head-end Conductor on the ILISB5 told the Dispatcher that, ‘he believed that there were cars on the Bertram siding’. The Dispatcher said ’NO, the CAD screen shows the siding to be clear'. There was no further discussion and the ‘helper crew’ pulled the the train eastbound and entered the Bertram siding at 2:41 am on September 8, 2022. Eight seconds later they were dead.
Every rail accident has its components, and at so many different junctures tragedy could have been avoided. This one is an easy read and I will explain a few failures that would have saved the lives of two precious railroaders:
Reliance on technology.
There are many parallels for humanity’s doomsday that explore this concept. If a conductor questions the fact that a siding has railcars but the Dispatcher says that his computer tells him otherwise, why would he ignore the human element? How about telling the ‘helper crew’ to enter the siding at ‘restricted speed’ as a precaution? How about finding a signalman or maintenance person on duty to go physically check the conductor’s concern? How about looking at logbooks at the Dispatcher’s office to see if the conductor may be correct, (we are talking about empty stacks that have been sitting there for 8 months)? This issue begs way too many questions unanswered by the NTSB report. How familiar was the Dispatcher with the territory? How deeply did the UPRR under PSR cut the Dispatching staff at Omaha? Where is the redundancy that safety so necessarily relies upon?
Heightened Awareness When Things Get Weird.
I think for many of us operating craft members, we can recall when we were required to do things differently from the daily tasks we normally handled efficiently. Exploring new territory and familiarization trips were always an exciting time but one which we greeted with awareness and caution. 'Running against the current of traffic' always seemed a risky endeavor and one that would have me scrambling for my rulebook and timetable. I would like to know how often the ‘helper crew’ that perished at Bertram had taken the lead position? Was it normal? Had that 'helper crew' overheard the ILISB5 Conductor’s conversation with the Dispatcher over the radio?
As an instructor, I always preached ’situational awareness’. Questioning the Dispatcher, as the ILISB5 Conductor did concerning railcars in Bertram siding, exemplifies the skill of a seasoned railroader. Again, questions arise from the NTSB report for which there are few answers: Why didn’t Long Beach know well in advance that it could not accommodate the ILISB5? How familiar was the ‘helper crew’ with the Yuma district and the Bertram siding, (again, the railcars had been stored there for 8 months)? With longer trains, fewer crews and a decimated work force due to PSR, what is the incidence of ’things going weird’ where employees work outside their known territories in surprise scenarios? Fatigue and complacency are the enemies of situational awareness.
Keeping the Western Pacific operational in the late 1970s was a ’seat of your pants’ working environment and 'weird railroading’ was the rule of the day. As traffic increased we improvised as best we could. Lacking reliable power and maintenance, we kept traffic moving with innovative procedures. It was not uncommon to leave Oroville with six to eight U30B’s, (derelict GE power) and lose half of them climbing the Feather River Canyon with a heavy drag. Track speed would drop to 4 miles an hour until we stalled. We would be stuck there between sidings until some hot shot train from Oakland or Stockton came up from behind to help push. Those days I was head-end material but on several trips found myself in the caboose. On the first such occasion, I laced up the air to the lead locomotive and climbed back aboard the caboose. The amount of power and stress applied to the caboose's center beam made it shudder convulsively. I instinctively bailed off and got up on the lead locomotive of the following train. That kind of 'situational awareness’ helped me keep my life, limbs and sanity through 35 years.
In April of 1980 I deadheaded back to Oakland from Stockton in a caboose with a seasoned Conductor named Obanshain and his Brakeman, Mark Shipman. A month later, the two of them had a similar situation to that which I describe above. Both of them remained on their caboose. At Hayward the caboose went sideways and left the track plunging over an overpass. Then, the second unit of the shoving train dropped on top of them creating a massive fireball. That was the infamous Hayward accident that cost the Western Pacific dearly and hastened its demise.
We expect the railroad to keep us safe but we have a duty to be part of that equation. Call it self-preservation or situational awareness but when things get ‘weird’ we must speak up and take action. PSR has not been a benefit to railroad safety. It has only been a benefit to the bottom line providing stock holders with profits. It is encouraging to know that recent sick leave agreements will provide employees the opportunity to ’take a day’ when needed to prevent fatigue and complacency which is the main enemy of ’situational awareness’ and self preservation.
Signed, "A CONCERNED RETIRED RAILROADER"
References used in preparing this commentary:
[www.trains.com]
* * * * *
Responding commentary from another retired railroader:
Sometimes a train dispatcher can be a computer operator but sometimes a computer operator cannot be a train dispatcher. As soon as the conductor notified the train dispatcher that he thought the siding was occupied a train dispatcher would have blocked the siding and not removed the blocks until someone physically checked the siding. When I first started train dispatching in 1969 on the San Diego Sub we had to keep a log of the sidings and if no train had traveled through the siding in a stated number of hours we were required to run a train through the siding to make sure the rails did not rust and we lose the occupancy. With 90 MPH passenger trains and 15 MPH turnouts sometimes we got feedback from the engineer asking for an explanation. When out riding trains I always tried to explain this to crews. Bottom line. This should absolutely never have happened.
An Anatomy of a Train Wreck
A little over a year ago, a UPRR crew hauling a double stack near the Salton Sea in California was lined into the Bertram siding. Ostensibly it was an empty siding according to dispatching logs in Omaha, NE. With tragic consequences, this action caused the death of the engineer and conductor when the train ran headlong into a string of empty stack cars that had been stored in the siding. In the 2 am darkness the crew saw nothing until it was too late and the empty stack cars sheared the cab right off of the lead locomotive.
At the time of this tragedy, I wrote in this Report that perhaps the dispatcher had inadvertently lost a 'post-it note' that had fluttered off of the console in Omaha. Initial reports claimed that it was an un-bonded siding which turned out not to be true. My snide comment was unbefitting of this tragedy, but without detailed information, my suspicion was that PSR, (Precision Scheduled Railroading) may have played a role. The doubling of train lengths and sizable cuts to the workforce can only result in a lack of durable redundancy and safety protocols. Furthermore, the stress imposed on the remaining workforce can erode effectiveness, attention and alertness.
This past month the NTSB Report on the Salton Sea tragedy was released and the details are actually worse than I might have imagined. The Bertram siding was bonded, signaled and controlled by Omaha dispatchers. The NTSB’s report shows that in the previous nine hours, the Bertram siding showed ‘occupied’ and then ‘unoccupied’ two dozen times. According to the NTSB, the empty stack cars had been sitting on the siding unmolested for more than eight months! It was the NTSB’s assessment that the close proximity to the Salton Sea had rusted the rails and wheels so severely that they intermittently failed to bond the rail.
If the Dispatcher’s board in Omaha showed the ‘false’ empty siding indication at the time the train was lined in, it should absolve the Dispatcher of any guilt. One would certainly not want to burden the Dispatcher’s conscience with the consequences of this tragedy, but a deeper look into this NTSB report provides a better understanding of what happened.
Stack Train ILISB5 was westbound from Santa Teresa, NM to Long Beach, CA. It had passed the Bertram siding at about 9 pm on September 7th, 2022 and traveled another forty miles where ‘helper units’ were added to the rear at Myoma, CA for the trip to Long Beach. When the train reached West Palm Springs, the Dispatcher radioed the train telling the crew that Long Beach had no room for the train and that the ‘helper units’ on the rear should drag the train back to the Bertram siding.
The NTSB report acknowledges that the head-end Conductor on the ILISB5 told the Dispatcher that, ‘he believed that there were cars on the Bertram siding’. The Dispatcher said ’NO, the CAD screen shows the siding to be clear'. There was no further discussion and the ‘helper crew’ pulled the the train eastbound and entered the Bertram siding at 2:41 am on September 8, 2022. Eight seconds later they were dead.
Every rail accident has its components, and at so many different junctures tragedy could have been avoided. This one is an easy read and I will explain a few failures that would have saved the lives of two precious railroaders:
Reliance on technology.
There are many parallels for humanity’s doomsday that explore this concept. If a conductor questions the fact that a siding has railcars but the Dispatcher says that his computer tells him otherwise, why would he ignore the human element? How about telling the ‘helper crew’ to enter the siding at ‘restricted speed’ as a precaution? How about finding a signalman or maintenance person on duty to go physically check the conductor’s concern? How about looking at logbooks at the Dispatcher’s office to see if the conductor may be correct, (we are talking about empty stacks that have been sitting there for 8 months)? This issue begs way too many questions unanswered by the NTSB report. How familiar was the Dispatcher with the territory? How deeply did the UPRR under PSR cut the Dispatching staff at Omaha? Where is the redundancy that safety so necessarily relies upon?
Heightened Awareness When Things Get Weird.
I think for many of us operating craft members, we can recall when we were required to do things differently from the daily tasks we normally handled efficiently. Exploring new territory and familiarization trips were always an exciting time but one which we greeted with awareness and caution. 'Running against the current of traffic' always seemed a risky endeavor and one that would have me scrambling for my rulebook and timetable. I would like to know how often the ‘helper crew’ that perished at Bertram had taken the lead position? Was it normal? Had that 'helper crew' overheard the ILISB5 Conductor’s conversation with the Dispatcher over the radio?
As an instructor, I always preached ’situational awareness’. Questioning the Dispatcher, as the ILISB5 Conductor did concerning railcars in Bertram siding, exemplifies the skill of a seasoned railroader. Again, questions arise from the NTSB report for which there are few answers: Why didn’t Long Beach know well in advance that it could not accommodate the ILISB5? How familiar was the ‘helper crew’ with the Yuma district and the Bertram siding, (again, the railcars had been stored there for 8 months)? With longer trains, fewer crews and a decimated work force due to PSR, what is the incidence of ’things going weird’ where employees work outside their known territories in surprise scenarios? Fatigue and complacency are the enemies of situational awareness.
Keeping the Western Pacific operational in the late 1970s was a ’seat of your pants’ working environment and 'weird railroading’ was the rule of the day. As traffic increased we improvised as best we could. Lacking reliable power and maintenance, we kept traffic moving with innovative procedures. It was not uncommon to leave Oroville with six to eight U30B’s, (derelict GE power) and lose half of them climbing the Feather River Canyon with a heavy drag. Track speed would drop to 4 miles an hour until we stalled. We would be stuck there between sidings until some hot shot train from Oakland or Stockton came up from behind to help push. Those days I was head-end material but on several trips found myself in the caboose. On the first such occasion, I laced up the air to the lead locomotive and climbed back aboard the caboose. The amount of power and stress applied to the caboose's center beam made it shudder convulsively. I instinctively bailed off and got up on the lead locomotive of the following train. That kind of 'situational awareness’ helped me keep my life, limbs and sanity through 35 years.
In April of 1980 I deadheaded back to Oakland from Stockton in a caboose with a seasoned Conductor named Obanshain and his Brakeman, Mark Shipman. A month later, the two of them had a similar situation to that which I describe above. Both of them remained on their caboose. At Hayward the caboose went sideways and left the track plunging over an overpass. Then, the second unit of the shoving train dropped on top of them creating a massive fireball. That was the infamous Hayward accident that cost the Western Pacific dearly and hastened its demise.
We expect the railroad to keep us safe but we have a duty to be part of that equation. Call it self-preservation or situational awareness but when things get ‘weird’ we must speak up and take action. PSR has not been a benefit to railroad safety. It has only been a benefit to the bottom line providing stock holders with profits. It is encouraging to know that recent sick leave agreements will provide employees the opportunity to ’take a day’ when needed to prevent fatigue and complacency which is the main enemy of ’situational awareness’ and self preservation.
Signed, "A CONCERNED RETIRED RAILROADER"
References used in preparing this commentary:
[www.trains.com]
* * * * *
Responding commentary from another retired railroader:
Sometimes a train dispatcher can be a computer operator but sometimes a computer operator cannot be a train dispatcher. As soon as the conductor notified the train dispatcher that he thought the siding was occupied a train dispatcher would have blocked the siding and not removed the blocks until someone physically checked the siding. When I first started train dispatching in 1969 on the San Diego Sub we had to keep a log of the sidings and if no train had traveled through the siding in a stated number of hours we were required to run a train through the siding to make sure the rails did not rust and we lose the occupancy. With 90 MPH passenger trains and 15 MPH turnouts sometimes we got feedback from the engineer asking for an explanation. When out riding trains I always tried to explain this to crews. Bottom line. This should absolutely never have happened.
The High Price of Precision Scheduled Railroading