(The Associated Press circulated the following article on November 3.)
HERMISTON, Ore. — City officials are trying to block Union Pacific Railroad from running trains through town by remote control.
For the second time in about two weeks, a city official has sent a strongly worded letter opposing the plan.
Mayor Bob Severson wrote a letter Wednesday to Jolene Molitoris, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration.
“I think it’s outrageous,” Severson said about an anonymous tip the city received about a possible test run of a remote-controlled train on the Umatilla turn, a track that runs through Hermiston between Hinkle and Umatilla.
The test run did not take place, nor was one scheduled, said Mark Davis, a Union Pacific spokesman in Omaha, Neb., the headquarters for the railroad.
Greg Rosales, the railroad’s director of terminal operations at Hinkle, said Union Pacific still is studying operating remote-control locomotives, known in the industry as RCL.
Rosales did not confirm or deny that a remote-control operation was scheduled Thursday, but said the railroad had “people out here from Omaha.”
Tim Donnigan, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen in Pocatello, Idaho, said he understood the remote-control test was scheduled Wednesday night or early Thursday.
The train crew would remain at the terminal, he said, while managers would operate the train, accompanied by representatives of the company that produces the remote-control equipment.
The remote control technology allows operators to control locomotives with radio transmitters to communicate with onboard computers. The operators are conductors with additional training. They either ride on or in the locomotives or walk alongside as they add and drop cars from a train, a job called switching.
“They want to do some testing outside the terminals,” Donnigan said.
He said the Federal Railroad Administration prohibits remote-control operations on main lines, but the Umatilla turn is a 14-mile branch line with some steep grades.
Davis said the technology has been in use 12 years. Union Pacific started using it four years ago, but uses it strictly in rail yards and on industry track.
But the railroad is studying the feasibility of operating remote control locomotives in a wider area, he said.
City Manager Ed Brookshier, who wrote a letter last month to Rosales objecting to remote-controlled operations in town, said the railroad did not notify the city of any proposed test run.
Cary Sherrow of Hermiston, a Union Pacific engineer, said he had heard rumors about the remote-control test. As vice chairman of the union local, he opposes it. The Umatilla turn involves about 18 public railroad crossings, he said.
“People are worried about the nerve gas out here at the depot,” Sherrow said. “They’ve got stuff running through their town that’s much more deadly than that anhydrous ammonia, chlorine and sulfuric acid.”