In recent years, Precision Scheduled Railroading policies adopted by Norfolk Southern and others have compromised safety, according to a pair of former NS engineers who spoke to the Mirror this week in the aftermath of the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

PSR, a strategy adopted by six of the seven largest U.S. freight railroads, is “intended to increase efficiency and reduce costs” — one “associated with fewer staff, longer trains” along with reductions in the number of assets like locomotives, according to a web page of the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Federal Railroad Administration safety data from 2011-21 is inconclusive, with railroads claiming PSR may even have enhanced safety — even as rail safety inspectors and unions claim it has degraded it, according to the GAO.

“Safety of our employees and the communities we operate is our number one priority,” Norfolk Southern stated in an email that calls hazmat incidents extremely rare. “We diligently monitor our trains and infrastructure to identify potential hazards, and we invest approximately a billion (dollars) annually into maintaining our infrastructure.”

But fewer engineers and conductors to operate trains has led to employees working “endless hours” — not knowing when, where or for how long they’re going to be on the job, resulting in dangerous fatigue at locomotive controls, according to Ron Kaminkow, organizer for Railroad Workers United, who worked for Conrail before his NS employment.

Those working conditions have led to high turnover, so there is less on-the-job mentoring of newer employees by veteran engineers and conductors, Kaminkow said.

Longer trains are harder for engineers to keep “bunched” or “stretched” to avoid collective slack between coupler connections — making “slack action” derailments more likely, Kaminkow said.

In prescribing longer trains, PSR has led to some trains being composed “in haste,” causing “stringline” derailments — lightweight cars behind locomotives pulled off tracks to the inside of curves. It is an action that mimics the pulling of two ends of a string lying curved upon a table, said Dan Cupper, who worked as an NS conductor and eventually engineer between 2006 and 2018.

Stringline derailments have happened twice on the Horseshoe Curve and several times on a sharp curve at the Enola yard near Harrisburg, according to Cupper.

“The physics of the whole thing is sketchy,” Cupper said of long trains — which can be made up of, for example, 240 cars, instead of two trains at 120 each, he said.

One long train with two crew members is attractive, because only a single two-person crew is needed, Cupper said.

The PSR efficiency drive has also led to a severe reduction in time allotted for train inspections, prior to runs, which can lead to derailments if problems are missed, according to Kaminkow.

The efficiency drive has also led to reduction in track maintenance, which can lead to structural failures resulting in derailments, according to Kaminkow.

Yet the crew size has remained the same — two per train — in compliance with FRA regulations, the company stated in an email.

The company “continues to make substantial progress recruiting new crew members,” the company stated.

There are currently 7,500 “train and engine railroaders” in the system, with more than 800 individuals in conductor training, “thanks to our robust talent pipeline,” the company stated.

East Palestine cause

The failure of an overheated wheel bearing caused the East Palestine derailment, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Derailments can also occur when there is a break in the continuous air brake line that runs the length of any train, with hose connections at each car, according to Cupper.

A break triggers the train’s emergency braking system.

That emergency braking action can cause derailments because loss of air pressure proceeds forward and backward along the train, starting from the rupture, Cupper said.

That means braking action also doesn’t occur all at once.

That leads to the cars behind the rupture point continuing forward, even as the cars in front of them come to a stop, resulting in the cars slamming together, which can force cars off the track, according to Cupper.

When that happens, cars end up on the ground in a “telltale” zigzag pattern, Cupper said.

Emergency braking deliberately applied by an engineer who sees an obstacle ahead on the track can also cause derailment, Cupper said.

So can the “metallurgical” failure of a wheel, he said.

Railroads can’t stop hauling hazardous materials, however, because those materials are essential for daily life and because railroads are the most efficient — and still the safest practical way of transporting them, according to Frank Wilner, contributing editor for Railway Age.

That doesn’t mean it’s OK that the one-tenth of 1% of hazardous materials shipped by rail ends up on the ground via derailment, Wilner said — citing statistics from the American Association of Railroads.

The failures can end up as “catastrophe” for towns like East Palestine, he said.

The sensible thing now is to learn from the findings of the NTSB, which will produce lessons from the incident and report them when its methodical work is done, Wilner said.

It will require patience, he said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.