(The following article by Jim McKeever was posted on the Syracuse Post-Standard website on December 16. R.M. Evans is the Legislative Representative for BLET Division 169 in Syracuse, N.Y.)
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Teams of federal, state and local investigators Friday were trying to determine how and why CSX employee Ronald Foster, 54, was killed by a railroad car as he drove a CSX truck across tracks Thursday night in Manlius.
Whatever they find out, union representative Robert M. Evans said the fatality never should have happened.
Evans, of Fayetteville, criticized CSX’s use of remote-controlled engines, one of which was involved in Foster’s death.
In February 2003, another CSX employee, John Sneddon, of Sackets Harbor, was killed on a nearby section of track while his partner, a conductor, was operating a locomotive using a remote control. Evans’ union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, protested the use of remote controls, calling them “inherently unsafe and hazardous to our members and other railroad employees.”
Based on what CSX employees told him late Thursday, Evans said Foster, of Franklin Park in DeWitt, likely didn’t see the flatbed railroad car coming along the track and the engine’s operator wasn’t close enough to see that Foster’s truck was in the car’s path.
CSX officials outside the offices on North Central Avenue on Friday declined to be interviewed. Philadelphia-based CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan wouldn’t comment on Thursday’s crash, but said remote control “is a safe and important technology” and used by many railroads.
“We need to get a precise read on what happened here, and (ask) is there something we can learn to keep it from happening in the future?” he said. “It’s a tragedy, plain and simple.”
Sullivan said Foster was the company’s first employee fatality this year on its 21,000-mile system. “It is one too many,” he said.
Evans, who’s state vice chair of the union, said the kind of railroad car that struck Foster’s CSX Chevrolet Silverado truck is low to the ground and was being pushed along with other cars by someone operating the engine by remote control.
The cars are hard to see in the dark, he said. They are designed to hold tractor-trailers and supposed to travel at less than 10 mph inside the rail yards, Evans said, but even at that speed he estimated it would take 75 yards to stop it.
Manlius police Capt. Bill Bleyle said the railroad car’s speed will be determined when investigators download information from the onboard device that records that information.
Evans said Foster was a “car inspector,” whose job is to drive from one spot in the yard to another to troubleshoot problems with railroad cars.
Foster’s truck was crossing the tracks just east of a tower between the Fremont Road overpass and a bridge in Minoa when it was struck by the car, which was going in reverse under remote control, Bleyle said.
Remote-control operators are not usually in a tower, Bleyle said, but the exact location of the operator of the engine that struck Foster is under investigation.
Foster’s truck ended up upside down, pinned beneath the car. Police and rescue workers had to make sure it was safe to cross several sets of tracks before they could reach the crash scene, but Bleyle said the delay was less than five minutes.
Bleyle said crews from the Minoa Fire Department weren’t able to extricate Foster until after 3 a.m. Friday, more than nine hours after the crash. Nearby hazardous materials needed to be neutralized, and cranes had to be used to lift the railroad car off the truck, which sustained extensive damage, Bleyle said.
“It was a slow process, a dignified process,” he said. Foster was pronounced dead at the scene.
Manlius police investigators returned to the scene Friday to take photographs in daylight and also went to a towing company to examine the truck Foster was driving, Bleyle said.
Assorted agencies are investigating and will share information, he said. CSX has been helpful and has allowed Manlius police to interview its employees, he said.
“Our primary responsibility is to determine whether this is a criminal (matter), and there’s no evidence of that,” Bleyle said.