[ In October, months before the East Palestine derailment, the
company also directed a train to keep moving with an overheated wheel
that caused it to derail miles later in Sandusky, Ohio.]
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A NORFOLK SOUTHERN POLICY LETS OFFICIALS ORDER CREWS TO IGNORE SAFETY
ALERTS  
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Topher Sanders and Dan Schwartz
February 22, 2023
ProPublica
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_ In October, months before the East Palestine derailment, the
company also directed a train to keep moving with an overheated wheel
that caused it to derail miles later in Sandusky, Ohio. _

This was the view from my front yard on the night of February 3rd, in
East Palestine Ohio, , (thunderlips36 - Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 4.0)

 

Norfolk Southern allows a monitoring team to instruct crews to ignore
alerts from train track sensors designed to flag potential mechanical
problems.

ProPublica learned of the policy after reviewing the rules of the
company, which is engulfed in controversy after one of its trains
derailed this month, releasing toxic flammable gas over East
Palestine, Ohio.

The policy applies specifically to the company’s Wayside Detector
Help Desk, which monitors data from the track-side sensors. Workers on
the desk can tell crews to disregard an alert when “information is
available confirming it is safe to proceed” and to continue no
faster than 30 miles per hour to the next track-side sensor, which is
often miles away. The company’s rulebook did not specify what such
information might be, and company officials did not respond to
questions about the policy.

The National Transportation Safety Board will be looking into the
company’s rules, including whether that specific policy played a
role in the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine. Thirty-eight cars,
some filled with chemicals, left the tracks and caught fire,
triggering an evacuation and agonized questions from residents about
the implications for their health. The NTSB believes a wheel bearing
in a car overheated and failed immediately before the train derailed.
It plans to release a preliminary report on the accident Thursday
morning.

ProPublica has learned that Norfolk Southern disregarded a similar
mechanical problem on another train that months earlier jumped the
tracks in Ohio.

In October, that train was en route to Cleveland when dispatchers told
the crew to stop it, said Clyde Whitaker, Ohio state legislative
director for the Transportation Division of the International
Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, or
SMART. He said the help desk had learned that a wheel was heating up
on an engine the train was towing. The company sent a mechanic to the
train to diagnose the problem.

Whitaker said that it could not be determined what was causing the
wheel to overheat, and that the safest course of action would have
been to set the engine aside to be repaired. That would have added
about an hour to the journey, Whitaker said.

But Whitaker said the dispatcher told the crew that a supervisor
determined that the train should continue on without removing the
engine.

Four miles later, the train derailed while traveling about 30 miles
per hour and dumped thousands of gallons of molten paraffin wax
[[link removed]] in
the city of Sandusky.

Records from the Federal Railroad Administration, the agency
responsible for regulating safety in the railroad industry, show that
Norfolk Southern identified the cause of the October derailment as a
hot wheel bearing. Whitaker said this bearing was on the same engine
that originally drew concerns.

A spokesperson for the FRA said the agency’s investigation into the
derailment is ongoing. The agency did not say whether it was examining
the role of any Norfolk Southern officials in deciding to keep the
damaged engine on the train. It’s still unknown what role, if any,
the help desk played in the final decision.

This month, 20 miles before Norfolk Southern’s train spectacularly
derailed in East Palestine, the help desk should have also gotten an
alert. As the train rolled through Salem, it crossed a track-side
sensor. Video footage
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a nearby Salem company shows the train traveling with a fiery glow
underneath its carriage.

If, like the Sandusky train, this one was dangerously heating up, a
key question for investigators will be whether the help desk became
aware and alerted the crew, and if it did, why the crew was not
instructed to stop. The NTSB told ProPublica it is reviewing data from
the Salem detector and those before it on the train’s route.

Norfolk Southern declined to say whether members of the train’s crew
received an alert before the derailment and, if they did, whether the
help desk told them to disregard it. The company did not address
questions about its policy giving its help desk leeway to ignore such
alerts. A spokesperson said that the company’s detector network is a
massive safety investment, and that its trains rarely require
troubleshooting.

ProPublica asked officials at the six other large freight railroad
companies whether they have similar policies allowing employees to
disregard such alerts. CSX and Burlington Northern Santa Fe said they
don’t, and Canadian National said that no one can instruct a crew to
continue traveling when they receive an alert “requiring them to
stop the train.” Union Pacific, Canadian Pacific and Kansas City
Southern did not respond.

While some employees and outside experts say there are times in which
such policies safely benefit business operations, union officials
believe they are emblematic of Precision Scheduled Railroading, the
most controversial — and profitable — innovation that’s come out
of the country’s seven biggest railroads, the so-called Class 1s, in
the last decade. It prioritizes keeping rail cars and locomotives in
constant motion.

_Gabriel Sandoval
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Morton contributed reporting._

_[TOPHER SANDERS is a reporter at ProPublica covering railroad
safety._

_DAN SCHWARTZ is an independent investigative reporter covering
railroad safety for ProPublica.]_

* railroads
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* railroad safety
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* Norfolk Southern Railway
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* Donald Trump
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* Health and Safety
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* corporate profits
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* railroad workers
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* East Palestine Ohio
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* rail derailment
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* train disaster
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