(Reuters circulated the following article by Nick Carey on September 4.)
NORTH LAKE, Ill. — With a wink, Shawn Smith applied far too much power to the locomotive, deliberately risking ripping the 15,000-ton, 135-car coal train in two.
“If this were real, the folks around there would be getting quite a show right now,” said the engineer at No. 1 U.S. railroad Union Pacific Corp. as the train simulator screen in front of him shows dangerous pressure building rapidly in the couplings between the cars he is hauling. Too much pressure and they will snap.
Shawn, 32, and Alan Smith — no relation — are using the simulator at this Union Pacific facility in a Chicago suburb to test different, often extreme, scenarios on the route they have traveled daily in real life for more than a year.
“We’ve had everything thrown at us today,” Alan, 39, said, “including a bus.”
Throwing the bus is Paul Fessenbecker, a 40-year rail veteran and one of the trainers Union Pacific has assigned to transform new engineers into old hands.
“We don’t have much time,” said Fessenbecker, who will retire in February.
U.S. railroads face a major challenge over the next decade as tens of thousands of highly qualified staff meet requirements to earn a full pension.
This leaves the industry with many young engineers who lack the experience that comes from spending decades on the rails. So, the railroads are embracing modern tools like simulators to teach accelerating, braking and fuel conservation.
Logistics experts say the railroads are doing a good job of tackling the problem, but should plan better to avoid a repeat situation in the future.
The last major wave of engineer hiring was in the 1960s and 1970s, before rail deregulation in 1980. In a poor state financially, the railroads spent two decades pulling up track and cutting jobs to raise productivity and stay in business.
In the last three years, U.S.railroads have witnessed a reversal of fortune. U.S. imports are up, driven largely by the outsourcing of manufacturing to developing nations such as China. Coal demand has jumped as utilities switch from expensive natural gas.
This has boosted profits. But while railroads must haul more goods, they face an exodus of workers with 30 years service and eligible for a full pension at age 60. Union Pacific alone will need to replace 40 per cent of its staff in the next decade.
The railroads have started hiring thousands of new workers, men and women, but operating a train is harder than it looks.
“It takes time and experience to operate a train properly,” said Tom Mentzer, a logistics expert at the University of Tennessee.
It is a skill that is changing as freight trains get longer and heavier. Coal trains, often weighing up to 15,000 tons, have three locomotives — one at the front, one at the rear and sometimes with one in the middle to distribute power.
“Handling trains with multiple locomotives is a real challenge,” said Bill Faulhaber, a training manager at railroad Norfolk Southern Corp. Railroad officials compare accelerating a train too fast to cracking a whip, where the whiplash can snap couplings.
Even experienced engineers can have trouble handling large coal trains and are prone to breaking them in two. “We call them scrap iron kings and queens,” said Cameron Scott, who runs Union Pacific’s Powder River Basin operations.
New engineers often overuse brakes, using up too much fuel, which can cost millions of dollars annually. The locomotive burns diesel to run a generator that provides power to accelerate and brake. Inexperienced engineers tend to go too fast then apply the brakes to slow down, instead of maintaining speed.
All the major railroads have simulators and are relying on technology to iron out problems.
“Simulators allow us to train engineers on any network route and simulate all weather conditions,” said Calvin Hobbs, assistant vice president for safety and technical training at Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.
BNSF locomotives use computers that record everything from fuel use to train speed, which the company downloads at random to check up on new and experienced engineers alike. Engineers with problems braking or speeding are sent for more training.
Norfolk Southern uses black boxes — similar to those used on airplanes — to do much the same thing as BNSF.
The University of Tennessee’s Mentzer said although the railroads have adopted a sound training strategy for thousands of new workers, he added “this is history repeating itself.”
“People keep these jobs for years and every few decades the railroads have to hire thousands of people,” he said. “It would be better to plan for this turnover further in advance than rush to train thousands of people.”