(The following appeared on the Progressive Railroading website on October 21, 2009.)
BNSF Railway Co.’s Technical Training Center in Overland Park, Kan., reached a new locomotive engineer training milestone earlier this month. On Oct. 8, the facility trained and evaluated the 5,000th engineer this year, using one of the railroad’s 48 network simulators. Last year, the center set a record by training 4,000 engineers.
Locomotive simulators are placed at terminals across BNSF’s system in addition to the training center. Each simulator is controlled from the center by an instructor who evaluates the engineer’s performance by providing scores and feedback on a completed run.
The simulators have helped BNSF improve safety because engineers can practice handling trains in a variety of situations. On average, more than half of all engineers complete simulator training each year.