(The following story appeared on the North Platte Bulletin website on July 24.)
NORTH PLATTE, Neb. — A remote controlled train collided with another train near the east end of Bailey Yard Friday morning, derailing two cars.
The accident happened about 9 a.m. near the east tower, Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis confirmed. One train ran into the side of another train. An empty grain hopper car was knocked on its side and a set of wheels on another empty car jumped the track. There were no injuries or track damage.
A Bailey yard worker who asked not to be identified for fear of job reprisals said such accidents happen several times a week at the yard.
Davis said he did not have specific accident totals at Bailey Yard at hand.
Remote controls have been used for nearly two years at Bailey Yard and are now the way most trains are moved inside the world’s largest train yard. An operator uses switches on a control pack hanging from the shoulders to command a locomotive forward, backward, and to start or stop.
The operators usually walk alongside the trains, which creep slowly through the yard. They are used to sort cars and create trains to go elsewhere in the nation.
Remote control operators are new hires and have replaced the train engineers that once controlled the locomotives from inside the cab.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers reports 93 RCL accidents around the nation since remote controls began to be implemented in 2000. That is only the tip of the iceberg of real numbers, BLE officials say.
In a July 9 Union Pacific accident in Pine Bluff, Ark., locomotives operated by remote control technology went through a control point on the Jonesboro Subdivision, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers reported July 21. The locomotives crashed into the side of a freight train on the mainline track. Eleven cars were derailed on the mainline.
The remote control unit was pulling more than 100 cars and was operated by two junior employees, both of whom were hired in early 2004, the BLE said.
The Pine Bluff, Ark. city council passed a resolution seeking to ban remote control train operations in February 2003, becoming one of the first nearly 60 communities to pass similar resolutions.