(The Florida Times-Union posted the following story by Christopher Calnan on its website on April 14.)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation is planning to use remote-controlled locomotives between the railroad’s Northside yard adjacent to the Anheuser-Busch plant and Blount Island, a largely industrial area.
The trains, which will operate one round trip a day, will traverse 12 road crossings during the 7-mile trip. But the potential for an accident is a matter of debate even though remote-controlled locomotives have been in development since the 1960s.
The steel and coal mining industries started using it 25 years ago. Canadian railroads have used it for the last decade.
The Federal Railroad Administration started studying remote control technology in 1994. In February 2001, it released regulations and the matter quickly became the center of a battle.
The industry’s two dominant unions, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers International, and the United Transportation Union International, fought over who should be operating remotes. The UTU won.
In January, an arbitrator ruled that the trainmen, those working on the ground, make most of the decisions in switching yards and would be better suited to use the devices.
Since 2001, the FRA said there have been 36 incidents in which remote control devices were used. Sixteen of the incidents met the FRA threshold requiring a report; one was a fatality, FRA spokesman Warren Flatau said.
Nationally, several hundred locomotive engineers have been displaced from switching yard jobs to main lines, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers spokesman John Bentley said. At CSXT’s Baldwin switching yard, four or five engineers operated trains. Now the work is done by three trainmen using belt packs.
In addition to Baldwin, CSXT uses remote control at its Moncrief yard on Jacksonville’s Westside and its Duval yard.
CSXT’s Anheuser-Busch-to-Blount Island service is expected to begin as soon as the U.S. Department of Defense finishes its massive move of equipment to the Middle East for the war in Iraq.
UTU’s general chairman, John Hancock, said the trip will be safe because the same precautions used by engineers will be used when the move is done with remote control.
CSXT said remote control operators are restricted by a top speed of 15 miles per hour compared with 40 for engineers.
But Tony Smith, who represents CSXT workers on the BLE’s eastern lines general committee, disagrees.
“When you start venturing out and leaving a yard facility, when you’re going over railroad crossings and dealing with the public, the problem is safety,” he said. “There’s a high potential for an accident, even a disaster, there. Only time will tell.”