I'm just reposting this without comment:

https://www.trains.com/pro/freight/ntsb ... ing-moves/



More at the link.

Having been a Class I freight conductor for several years and ridden numerous, sometimes long shoving moves (nothing like getting caught in a downpour hanging off the side of a boxcar), I would go along with a ban on the practice. It was one of my least favorite parts of the job. Yes, it will slow down switching moves - especially into sidings/customers on line-of-road operations. In a yard, you can just leave a crew member towards the end of a siding to watch the shove in, which means maybe adding a crew person to a crew. Hey, more employment for workers.

Bring Back the Caboose! in all seriousness i think the shove moves that cause the most problems are the ones to inspect a train, or shove for long distances. moving cars into or out of industries is not a good place to be riding anyway. to many potential close clearances.
The Naugatuck railroad uses a caboose that is locked from entry as a shoving platform quite well for several years now.

Al P.

I have a hard time believing that a ban is the route to take. Several of the incidents that spurred this suggestion stem from folks putting themselves in situations that maybe they didn't fully understand how they were setting themselves up for danger. This is likely tied to the decrease in training that new train service employees receive, and not making sure they have a full understanding of the job and rules before being "cut loose". The sheer number of "fully qualified" conductors and engineers that I work with who have to be reminded of fairly low level rules and procedures speaks volumes into the change of attitude that these employers have taken in regards to the perceived value they put on the training process.

Personally, I would prefer to see more face to face training about shove moves and associated hazards rather than an outright ban, but I apparently see the long term value more easily than some of these companies.

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Jennifer Hormendy.

Hormendy is a bona fide career bureaucrat, who having managed to get this appointment from Trump, likely imagines that a POTUS of her party will appoint her to be Secretary of Transportation, where after a couple years, she’d be sitting on Fortune 500 corporate boards making real money.

I suggest that you read her “Biographical Information and Qualifications” submission to the Senate Commerce Committee from 2018 as a part of her appointment to the NTSB Board.

https://www.commerce.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/media/doc/J.%20Homendy%20Committee%20Questionnaire%2004-19-2018.pdf

Inter alia, it states that she is “passionate” about transportation safety. Wonderful, but not particularly distinguishing, as I’m not sure who isn’t so disposed, especially after 9/11. Of course, being passionate isn’t the same thing as being informed or objective. Most teenage girls describe their interests as “passions”.

You will note that she received a Humanities degree from Penn State 1994 (Harrisburg) and worked exclusively in political circles until joining the NTSB, because bluntly, it was that or being a barista.

Sometime after that statement was submitted in 2018, she completed a Master of Transportation Safety Administration (MTSA) degree program from Clemson University “with a focus on the management and administration of road safety programs”. Delivered completely online, MTSA is a two-year, 30-credit-hour, non-thesis interdisciplinary program.

In other words, she has no railroad education or experience, no credentials in transportation economics, engineering or law and no inclination to respect the limits of her own inadequate knowledge.

Her penchant for solipsistic indiscretion first became obvious when she announced that the East Palestine derailment was “100% preventable”- not that containment was inadequate or that the response to Haz-mat derailments needs improvement.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=6148533748532216

https://www.c-span.org/clip/news-conference/ntsb-chair-on-train-derailment-in-east-palestine-ohio-this-was-100-preventable/5058708

She made this statement even though final report had yet to be issued - front running her own staff.

These are direct quotes from that report.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RIR2405%20CORRECTED.pdf

“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the derailment involving Norfolk Southern Railway train 32N was the failure of the L1 bearing on the 23rd railcar..”

“The derailment occurred because a bearing on a hopper car overheated and caused an axle to separate. There was not enough evidence to determine whether a mechanical inspection conducted before the derailment failed to identify signs of bearing failure; the bearing may not have been showing visible problems at the time of the inspection.”:

The question then becomes what exactly could be done to prevent mechanical failure. Whenever you work with or utilize metal, you have a potential for mechanical failure. In the words of the late Mark Brennan (former Steamtown Trainmaster) “the minute you turn a wheel, there’s risk-of you want zero risk, nothing moves”


I’m not an engineer but was an undergraduate engineering major long enough to engage in destructive testing and understand mechanical failure will happen and isn’t perfectly predictable. I also understand tradeoffs and that there’s diminishing marginal returns and increasing marginal costs associated with a quixotic question for perfect safety.

Now she opines that riding the rear end of a shoving move should be banned. Many of us on this board know more about the practice that she could imagine.

Now one has to ask, why wasn’t the practice ever banned by the Interstate Commerce Commission in its 108-year existence or the Federal Railroad Administration in its 59 ½ years? I don’t suppose anybody would say those agencies were (are) indifferent to safety or reluctant to issue regulations or orders, would they? Yet somehow, the FRA, with its many operating practices specialists, many who have actual experience, never proposed this ban. My guess is that they know that in some cases, such rough right of way, close clearances or poor light when depth perception and chromatic acuity are lost (forget the dark), it’s more dangerous to be on the ground.

Of COURSE it was "100% preventable"--all you have to do is put hotbox detectors every 2-3 miles that will automatically force a train to stop if it triggers a hotbox detector.

"If it saves JUST ONE life, isn't it worth it???"

Well, spacing might not help either. Same report:

"Because of design constraints, hot bearing detectors are likely to indicate misleadingly low bearing temperatures. This limit on detector performance, combined with NS’s standard operating procedures and the spacing between detectors, meant that the train’s crew did not have adequate warning to stop the train before the derailment."

NS has about 19,500 miles of route miles. If you wanted to put a detector every 2 or 3 miles along their system you would need around 7,000 of them.

East Palestine has cost Norfolk Southern $2.2 Billion so far.

$2.2 Billion / 7,000 == $314,000

Per this Trains magazine article, in 2003 it cost "about $200,000 to install a hotbox detector on a single track main line and $350,000 on double iron."

Seems to me that investing in a detector for every 2 or 3 miles would have cost the railroad less than that one derailment.

That's some amazing Dunning-Kruger right there, thinking that being an engineering drop-out makes one more qualified to opine on railroad safety than someone who spent 14 years as a Staff Director of the House Subcomittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials.

Title worship much?

You think she might be afflicted? How about you?

But thanks for providing us with a logical fallacy.

An argument from authority (Latin: argumentum ab auctoritate, also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam) is a form of argument in which the opinion of an authority figure (or figures) is used as evidence to support an argument.