CLEVELAND — Don Glass dons his Lionel train cap, flips a toggle to sound a bell, and twists a lever to set a nearby locomotive in motion.
No, this isn’t some toy train setup in a basement.
It’s the real thing – a 125-ton, unmanned locomotive. Glass is running it with a remote control at CSX’s yard in Parma, sorting boxcars to be picked up by other trains.
In mid-July, the yard joined a few dozen others across the country that this year began using remote controls. CSX said that while the remotes eliminate the need for engineers, they improve safety at the same time.
The safety issue has come under fire from the union representing engineers and at least one Ohio legislator, who is also a locomotive engineer. They say it is dangerous to take veteran engineers out of the mix. The remote controls are being run by specially trained brakemen, conductors and other personnel.
CSX officials, like others in the industry, insist the change was made to improve safety because it eliminates any miscommunication between the brakeman giving hand or radio signals to the engineer who had been on the train.
They say early indications are that the system is working, adding that it has been successfully used in Canada for more than 10 years.
Glass, a brakeman with 26 years in the railroad industry, endorses the change.
“It has worked out pretty good so far,” Glass said. “But there is a lot more to think about. You have to be on your toes.”
Glass had used hand signals and a radio to tell the onboard engineer when to go and stop.
Now the final call rests with him and his partner. Each carries a control unit while they walk next to the train or ride on the outside of the engine. One person is stationed at either end of the train as boxcars filled with auto parts are sorted on about a dozen tracks, waiting to be taken to assembly plants across the country.
If a remote-control operator would fall and fail to respond or would go too long without giving a command, the train would stop, officials said. Even leaning over too far would cause the “man down, man down” alert to sound.
CSX will slowly expand the technology to other yards, but there are no plans to use remote controls to run trains from city to city, spokesman Robert Sullivan said.
Norfolk Southern, likewise, said it is proceeding “very gradually,” with Columbus and Bellevue, Ohio, among a handful of its rail yards using remote controls, spokesman Rudy Husband said.
CSX officials said there are no plans to lay off engineers; those workers have been transferred to jobs being vacated largely through retirements.
State Sen. Robert Hagan doesn’t like what he sees. A recent proposal in the Ohio Senate by Hagan, a Democrat from Youngstown and a locomotive engineer for CSX in Lordstown, would outlaw the use of remote- control trains when crossing public roads, as is the case at the Parma and Lordstown yards.
“How safe is it at those crossings without someone on the train to blow the whistle?” he asked.
Very safe, CSX officials said. At the yard in Parma that serves the adjacent General Motors Corp. plant, for example, trains stop before the crossing, the gates go down and the remote-control operator walks across Brookpark Road before the trains proceed, railroad spokesmen said.
Don Hahs, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers headquartered in Cleveland, said the public should be concerned about potential hazards because “railroads handle all kinds of hazardous materials.”
“It’s our position that it is brake/throttle technology doing the engineers’ function,” Hahs said.
Those running the remote controls – brakemen, conductors and assistant engineers – are represented by the Lakewood-based United Transportation Union, which argues that the safety statistics from Canada show fewer accidents with remote control. UTU members run the equipment in Canada.
At Canadian National Railway, the accident rate for yard operations using remote control was 44 percent lower over a four-year period than the rate for yard operations using conventional technology, said the Association of American Railroads, the railroads’ trade organization.
The association said it was logical for UTU members to do the work because they were the ones giving signals to engineers under the old system.
An arbitrator is expected to rule this fall on the engineers’ union request to win jurisdiction for the work.
However, there is little question that remote control is here to stay.
Reducing accidents and trimming train crews in the rail yards from three workers to two is good for the railroad industry, said Tom White, spokesman for the industry association.
“It’s a very competitive world out there,” White said. “Railroads move about 40 percent of the freight. Trucks move about 30 percent, and the remainder is split between water (13 percent) and pipeline (17 percent).
“It’s keeping the goose that lays the golden egg healthy, and the goose is the railroad industry.”