So, who is in eastern Ohio/western PA? You guys good? You evacuated?

In reply to Mustang50 :

How the hell does owning BNSF have anything to do with how NS operates?

Edit:  Especially since BNSF is less gung-ho about PSR than most of the rest of the major carriers.

In reply to Mustang50 :

You guys just cant turn it off, can you?

So... some people say the troubles in the Railroad companies is primarily the result of government over management and micromanagement.  Others say it's all the result of the greed and stupidity of the companies themselves.

I suspect the "truth" lies somewhere in between.

I say "truth" because I am sure a real answer is very complicated and multi-faceted.  Not something a single finger pointing in a direction will explain.

It's really is not relevant at this point because no one really knows the "cause" of this incident and like won't for a while. It will almost certainly be a multi-faceted explanation.  Much like aviation accidents (which I know much more about) almost all are a combination of things going wrong (which of course includes people doing things wrong).

In reply to aircooled :

That is too reasonable to develop a knee-jerk outraged opinion with.

All I'm asking for is these people get the help they need!  That's not a knee jerk reaction.

In reply to aircooled :

It's very much like any issue - the emotions run high after a visible incident, the news steps in with their own opinions and mostly-un-educated conjecture, they rile people up for ratings, some nutjobs protest and write angry letters, and in the end the needle moves very little.  

As someone with 20+ years of railroad experience, I could rattle off several potential causes off the cuff.  I can also tell you why what the news often reports is wrong, misleading, and misinformed.  For example, I heard someone on one news station the other day say that the brakes on these trains go back to the Civil War era.  Which is about like Jeremy Clarkson's famous line about drum brakes being basically horse and buggy brakes.  Yes, there's a kernel of truth there, but there have been literally hundreds of patents on improvements to the air brake since it was first invented, and modern locomotive air brake systems work completely differently than their original design (direct acting vs. pressure reduction).  Even if this train had been equipped with ECP, there's no guarantee that would have prevented this disaster.  Of course, it might have, which is enough for them to run with and make a news story about.  Having  a caboose on the train, or an extra train crew personnel or two might have also prevented the accident, but it's sexy to talk about more and new technology.  

Mustang50 said:

All I'm asking for is these people get the help they need!  That's not a knee jerk reaction.

Problem is, you brought politics into it.  That's taboo around here.  Your profile shows you've been around these parts over a decade, so this should be pretty well established.  

RX Reven' said:

volvoclearinghouse said:

Indy - Guy said:

Indy - Guy said:

This post has received too many downvotes to be displayed.

Show/hide post

 

Thanks guys.  It's the first time (that I'm aware of) that one of my posts has been hidden.  Didn't think hinting that American citizens should be held at least as high as foreign citizens would be controversial. It must've hit a nerve. <== should be read with a hint of sarcasm.

I upvoted your post.  

...and I just tried to upvote your upvote and this is what I got:

I also just tried to upvote pheller's post as we tend to be pretty far apart on our views and yet I thought his post was very good aaaaand zero net score so somebody has been throwing down votes around like frisbees lately. 

I think it was explained that if you downvote a post it only shows your downvote.  If anyone else does you don't see it.

Makes sense from a certain POV, prevents group think 

GIRTHQUAKE said:

NickD said:

I mean, railroads do have good reason for not wanting government involvement since before deregulation in the '80s, the government, through the Interstate Commerce Commission, bankrupted damn near every single railroad in the north east and New England, which had a ripple effect that threatened to wipe out other railroads all across the country.

No, the railroads hurt themselves by forming duopolies and tetropolies, ironically prioritizing consistent moneymaking and status quo over improvements (much like today). In the 70s, there was massive flooding in the northeast that destroyed quite a lot of rail and they began fusing out of fear the federal government was going to nationalize all of them.

Well There's Your Problem has a 3 hour long podcast about it, complete will all the books and sources from people who worked it at the time. It's incredibly engaging, because it basically amounts to the dumbest possible ways corporations could ever "work"- at one point, they were literally randomly slicing entire rail lines off of a "planning stage" in the names of "equalizing" everything into 3 distinct rail lines to prevent said fear of takeover. It didn't work, conrail was still made, and despite all desires of the fed at that time Conrail actually made money.

Didn't get a chance to listen to this, but saying it was entirely the fault of railroads is a bit disingenuous. Like I said, the ICC controlled abandonment of services and the rates they could charge. If you were losing money at a service, you couldn't raise your rate to make it profitable, and you couldn't abandon the service either, unless the ICC said so. I would also say that that's overblowing the importance of Hurricane Agnes somewhat. By the time Agnes came along, Penn Central was already a disaster and had been for a long time (again, partially due to how poorly the ICC handled the merger), the Lehigh Valley and CNJ and Reading were already bankrupt, and the government was already working on their Final Solutions Plan. The only one it really walloped was Erie-Lackawanna, who was starting to show signs of life with competitive long-haul piggyback/Trailer-On-Flatcar and mail service from NY to Chicago and NJDOT helping finance some of the commuter services that had long bled it dry. The original plan had been to leave Erie-Lackawanna out as the competitor to Conrail (it had a NY-Chicago mainline like Penn Central), which might have been of dubious effectiveness, since it was surrounded to the north by Penn Central/Conrail's ex-New York Central mainline and to the south by Penn Central/Conrail's ex-Pennsylvania Railroad mainline. When Agnes destroyed a lot of the E-L, then they went into bankruptcy and it petitioned to be included into Conrail (the original idea was to hand Reading and E-L off to Chessie Systems and make Chessie Systems the mandatory Conrail competitor, only for Chessie Systems to back out at the eleventh hour due to E-L's onerous labor union agreements that stymied previous other mergers or proposals involving the Erie-Lackawanna). Also, Conrail itself stumbled along and was believed to be in imminent failure until 1980, when they passed the Staggers Act, which allowed railroads and shippers to set their own rates, Staggers Act which led to 51 percent reduction in average shipping rates and actually profitability.

Interesting article about reduced maintenance in that specific area, and in general.

According to the Washington Post, the EPA is taking over the response to the derailment.  They have a legally binding order to require Norfolk Southern to remediate the site and will direct the cleanup plan.  Appears to be the rationale for not declaring the site a Federal disaster area.  

EDIT: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/21/epa-norfolk-southern-clean-up-ohio-train-derailment/11312380002/

I apologize for bringing politics in to this discussion.  My emotions got the better part of me.  The administrator can remove all of my posts.

Trumbull County high school cancels game against East Palestine High School

Beachwood schools forfeits playoff game near East Palestine over health concerns

It's a shame, the EPA didn't make the mandates right away to allow these kids to play, in addition to all the other inconveniences and health concerns.

Mustang50 said:

Just follow the money trail.  Who is the largest shareholder in railroad stock in the U.S?  Warren Buffett.  Who also is one of the largest contributor to the Democratic party?

Your homework figure out who the largest shareholders of NS are.  Then revisit.  It would be better if it were Berkshire.....  it's not.

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

According to my Googles, it's:

1) Vanguard. 

2) Blackrock.  

3) State Street Global 

So...a bunch of funds, who many of us are probably invested in. 

AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:

Mustang50 said:

Just follow the money trail.  Who is the largest shareholder in railroad stock in the U.S?  Warren Buffett.  Who also is one of the largest contributor to the Democratic party?

Your homework figure out who the largest shareholders of NS are.  Then revisit.  It would be better if it were Berkshire.....  it's not.

Why would that be better?

eastsideTim said:

Interesting article about reduced maintenance in that specific area, and in general.

Can confirm, maintenance budgets are tight. However, a lot of the extended maintenance intervals we're seeing are not due to willy-nilly decisions, but research and product improvements that save money. For example, it used to be that a brake overhaul interval was 4 years. Now that's being extended out, not on capricious whim, but after significant investment in technology and testing (collaborating with the FRA, who mandates those intervals) to prove that it is safe. 

Now, the hot beating detector maintenance, that sounds like a legitimate issue, and one that could be a contributing factor here. Interestingly, though, it's not a Federal req't, and it can't really be made political (like they're trying to do with the whole ECP brake thing) so it's not getting a lot of talk.  

This reminds me of the airline fiasco we had a little while ago with all the flights cancelled due to the breakdown of that antiquated pilot messaging system. A whole lot of infrastructure stuff in this country needs to be fixed, and much of that is extraordinarily un-sexy stuff like that.   

gearheadmb said:

AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:

Mustang50 said:

Just follow the money trail.  Who is the largest shareholder in railroad stock in the U.S?  Warren Buffett.  Who also is one of the largest contributor to the Democratic party?

Your homework figure out who the largest shareholders of NS are.  Then revisit.  It would be better if it were Berkshire.....  it's not.

Why would that be better?

I believe he means it would be better to make his case/ point. 

06HHR (Forum Supporter) said:

According to the Washington Post, the EPA is taking over the response to the derailment.  They have a legally binding order to require Norfolk Southern to remediate the site and will direct the cleanup plan.  Appears to be the rationale for not declaring the site a Federal disaster area.  

EDIT: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/21/epa-norfolk-southern-clean-up-ohio-train-derailment/11312380002/

This makes a lot of sense. Did the Governor figure out how to do this in lieu of declaring a disaster and having taxpayers pick up the bill?

Are all the Monday morning quarterbacks going to walk back their criticism? Doubtful. 
 

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

In what seems like a lifetime ago, I tested vibration analysis software/hardware primarily for bearings.  At the time, it was pretty much the forefront of predictive vs preventative maintenance, but from what I've been reading about this, they may not be inspecting cars thoroughly enough to be reliably implementing predictive maintenance.  However, most of the work I did involved testing stationary machinery, we were just dipping our toes into railroad testing, and at the time, it was limited to high speed passenger rail, so smoother rails and lighter cars, where there would be a better signal to noise ratio than freight traffic.

I am Dustrbd13's munchkin as known on this platform, and I'm doing a project for school and I need your help. I know it's been a year since the derailment happened. I was wondering if those who live close to the site or were majorly affected by it could share what environmental impacts it's had in the past year. 

Seeing this thread brought back to the top (Sorry, Mini_Munchkin, I can't help you) did remind of this recent finding. Turns out that burning those cars wasn't necessary according to Oxy Vinyls, the company that was shipping the vinyl chloride. They said there was no risk of polymerization in the cars and the chemicals were stable, but no one passed that word along from Oxy Vinyls.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/east-palestine-train-derailment-controlled-burn-unnecessary-jennifer-homendy-senate-hearing/

In reply to NickD :

Goes to show that there are pyromaniacs at every level of corporate management.