(The following story by Leeann Kossey was published on the website of Amarillo television station KAMR on January 15.)
AMARILLO, Texas — Is your safety at risk? Some locomotive engineers are worried about our safety after Burlington Northern Santa Fe started using a new way to move their trains in the switching yard.
Since the beginning of Amarillo, there’s been a locomotive switching yard in the center of town. The switching yard is like an intersection for trains. It’s where engineers move trains from track to track — a job certified locomotive engineers have been doing for decades.
With new technology sweeping over the country, the way trains are moved from track to track is changing.
The traditional way is done with a three-man crew: There’s an engineer driving the train in the engine; an engineer on the ground who flips the switch on the track, allowing the train to change directions; and sometimes, there’s a third engineer on the new set of tracks waiting to hook up more cars to the train.
In Amarillo, BNSF is ditching the traditional way of switching trains. The week of Janurary 13, they started using remote control operations (RCO). That means real trains are operated by a guy with a remote.
There are two different ways to use RCO.
— First, there is a guy on the steps of the engine, driving the train with a belt pack remote control unit; and there’s a guy near the extra cars, ready to use his belt pack to take over driving the train once it gets to the new tracks.
— The second way of doing this is called ‘pitch and catch.’ There’s a guy with a belt back at the beginning of the tracks, who pitches control to a second guy on the new set of tracks. They communicate using radios, and there is no one one the train.
RCO is relatively new technology. It’s only been used by railroads in the U.S. since last March, but it started in Canada ten years ago. “Canadian National Railroad which also instituted this similar program, reported that in 1997-2001, there were 44% fewer on-track equipment incidents,” said BNSF director of public affairs Joe Faust.
However, the Federal Railroad Administration says that Canadian report is invalid because the information they used was biased. “If you had switched 1,000 cars a day with a traditional crew, and you’re switching 500 a day remotely, of course incidents are cut in half immediately right there, just in less work being done,” said Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers member Bryan Young.
In 2002, the union for locomotive engineers recorded 28 accidents involving RCO, but the FRA says a comparison of RCO accidents to traditionally operated accidents doesn’t exist yet. “Yeah, it is too new. I don’t think anyone’s experienced enough with it yet to really function safely with it,” said Young.
Amarillo engineers also worry about pedestrians. Last year, two people were killed in Amarillo switching yards after they got underneath a train. Local engineers say they see kids on yard tracks all the time, but if there’s no engineer on the train, he can’t see people on the tracks. “You’re going to have one set of eyes on one end, one set of eyes on the other end, and you’ve just taken out the best set of eyes for observation purposes out of the cab,” said Young.
The FRA says the majority of train accidents happen in yards, so local engineers also worry about the amount of hazardous material that comes through here. According to the Texas Railroad Commission, a little more than 1,300 tons of hazardous material travel through Amarillo switching yards every day.
“It wouldn’t be honest to say a derailment can’t happen with an engineer in the seat or with the RCO. That would not be a true statement. It can happen with either one. The problem is, the more apt to happen with the RCO,” said Young.
Five cities in the U.S. have banned RCO. They’ve adopted resolutions saying they don’t want RCO in their towns — but, city officials don’t have the authority to stop it, so all the resolutions do is prevent anyone from holding the cities responsible in case of an accident.
Amarillo mayor Trent Sisemore says that’s not a concern for us. “Our attorneys have indicated that even if there were an accident, that the city would not be held responsible because we have no regulatory authority over the railroad industry,” said Sisemore.
For now, RCO is being used in Amarillo. The railroad can even operate trains with remote controls across busy streets, but they can’t operate a train with a remote if the train is moving faster than ten miles per hour.
Even that rule could change soon. In California, one railroad is trying to get RCO approved on tracks with trains moving up to 70 miles per hour.
And, one final worry for locomotive engineers — job cuts. BNSF officials insist no one will lose their job because of RCO, but the I-Team got a copy of the United Transportation Union’s plan for each quarter of 2003. It shows 24 jobs will be cut in Amarillo in the first quarter.
“Reduce the crew from three to two, and it’s just not going to be very productive at all, as well as safe,” said Young.
Other towns in the area will also lose jobs to RCO. Those include: Lubbock, Fort Worth, and Hobart OK.
There is also a big difference in the training remote control opertators get, compared to the training traditional engineers get. The FRA only requires remote control operators to have about two weeks of training before they’re certified. Locomotive engineers, on the other hand, are required to have six months of training before they get their certification.
BNSF officials say there is global positioning technology available that forces trains to stop if there’s a loss of communication between the remote operators, but that system is not being used in Amarillo.