(The Arkansas City Traveler posted the following story by Foss Farrar on its website on September 17.)
ARKANSAS CITY, Kan. — A remote-control switch operation that started in the Arkansas City rail yards last week poses a safety hazard and may result in layoffs of railroad personnel here, Jim Hagar, the local chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, said Monday.
But officials of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe say the new technology — used in Canada since 1989 — is safe and that the real concern of the BLE is not about safety but about disagreement with another railroad workers’ labor union over job function.
Hagar, an Ark City-based engineer for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, said that Ark City is one of 31 cities in the U.S. that have been designated as a remote-control area.
Rail cars that are switched between Kansas Avenue in the northern part of town and south of Madison Avenue to the Arkansas River Bridge in the southern part of town sometimes carry hazardous materials, Hagar said. Children often dart across tracks in the switching yards.
“Basically, we have a ticking time bomb,” Hagar said. “Hopefully, no one will be injured or killed down there.”
Some of the cities that also use remote-control system have passed resolutions against the new technology, called RCO, or remote-control operation.
“You’ve got these local ordinances being passed that have no teeth because the railroads are under federal regulations,” he said. “But cities are passing them anyway, to cover themselves if an accident happens.”
But those cities that did pass resolutions are mainly eastern cities that did so early on after the technology was established in the U.S. (in early 2002), Steve Forsberg, general director of public affairs for the BNSF, said today. Forsberg has an office in Kansas City, Kan.
Forsberg said RCO is used in three dozen rail yards operated by the BNSF and in well over 100 rail yards operated by all railroads. He added that two states — Georgia and Alabama — had passed resolutions supporting new technology.
“The problem that BLE has is not with safety but with jobs,” Forsberg said, adding quickly that BNSF is not laying off any engineers.
“They (engineers) remain employed in BNSF. Instead of operating a switch engine, they run a locomotive engine on a train over land,” he said.
Hagar said the problem with the remote technology is that switchmen, instead of engineers, control the engine. “The switchman will be on the ground, he won’t be able to see people from above. I hate to say it but there’s a good chance someone could be run over.
“Numerous times I’ve done yard work, switching cars, and have seen kids crawling through cars,” he added. “They just don’t realize the danger.”
But Forsberg said that the new technology actually has reduced yard accidents by 50 percent and reduced injuries by 60 percent.
BLE began a “disinformation campaign” against RCO after it did not take an offer to negotiate with the railroad industry along with another union, the United Transportation Union, Forsberg said.
Another concern voiced by Hagar is the length of training of switchmen who use the remote control device to operate switch engines. “Switchmen have only two weeks to train,” he said. “But to be an engineer requires years of training. I hired out in 1967 and we couldn’t even touch the throttle (of an engine) for five or six years.”
Forsberg countered that, overall, switchmen get 13 weeks in safety training plus two more weeks learning the remote-control device. “Locomotive engineers now get 24 weeks, but they need it to operate the train.”