East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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Schteinkuh
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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

Unread post by Schteinkuh »

Also, it will never get better by senselessly defending the companies bcuz we likes trainz. Things will never change until they're held accountable for their actions
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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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David Collins wrote:
Tue Feb 14, 2023 9:47 am
Are there any damage estimates yet? It's got to be at least in the hundreds of millions.
From the Wall Street Journal:

“ JPMorgan analysts estimate that Norfolk Southern faces costs from the East Palestine derailment of roughly $2.7 billion.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ohio-trai ... eid=yhoof2


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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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Schteinkuh wrote:
Tue Feb 14, 2023 1:43 pm
Here's what NS did that makes them negligent:
-Drastically cut workforce including car mechanical staffing
-Reduced time per railcar inspection in half
-Forced employees to overlook safety and get the job done
-Created a culture of human robots who no longer value their careers and are just simply depressed

Also, they totally budget for these incidents to happen. That's the business stategy their Wall St overlords demand. Don't do any continual investment, only try to recruit when the STB forces you to, and deny deny deny. $1,000,000 to the town is laughable. For every citizen that's only $200.
So far, there isn't any evidence (at least that I have seen) that the overheated and failed bearing would have been detectable during a routine inspection. Perhaps somebody with more experience would be able to enlighten us as to if that is even possible, since the bearings are all sealed up.

The $1.2 million in direct relief was only for initial evacuation costs, and they say that they are continuing to offer aid to local residents and businesses. To suggest that it's the only aid they ever plan to offer is laughable.

I'm not defending Norfolk Southern or shielding them from liability, but there's just as much that can go wrong trying to pin blame on an organization as there is to absolve them. I'm just looking at what we do know and what I know about the industry to find that, as yet, this seems to be an exceedingly rare mechanical failure, not likely to have been noticed ahead of time. But, that's only based on what we know so far, so that could of course change.
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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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NTSB preliminary investigation page:

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pag ... MR005.aspx

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Schteinkuh
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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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Saturnalia wrote:
Tue Feb 14, 2023 7:08 pm
I'm not defending Norfolk Southern or shielding them from liability, but there's just as much that can go wrong trying to pin blame on an organization as there is to absolve them.

What can go wrong in holding NS accountable?
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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Here's what NS did that makes them negligent:
-Drastically cut workforce including car mechanical staffing
-Reduced time per railcar inspection in half
-Forced employees to overlook safety and get the job done
-Created a culture of human robots who no longer value their careers and are just simply depressed
That is YOUR opinion and not legal argument(s) in a Court of Law.

When the dust settles and all the facts come out, it may simply be a mechanical failure.

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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Say NS had appropriate levels of maintenance forces or more hot box detectors to watch for overheated axles, but the train still derailed. If the cars had electronic braking instead of air brakes, most studies say that the cars would have slowed down together in a better fashion than allowing the cars to accordion together and turn into a pile of mangled metal. Perhaps the cars wouldn't have burst and caused this disaster.
Interesting read about how some govt agencies started to get electronic braking set as a mandated rule, but lobbyists kept watering it down over the years and it basically got tossed out. Even NS studies show it would have helped in this situation.
https://www.levernews.com/rail-companie ... erailment/
Perhaps they can just run the cars by at 10mph like Grand Elk does... low chance of fireballs in my back yard when speeds are that slow during transport :)
Also, Norfolk Southern's company worth has dropped $5 billion since the derailment while the rest of the market is pretty flat since then.
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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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Macrotends.net shows NS having 30,000 employees in 2015, then making a steady decline to a low of 18,000 in 2021 and up to 19,000 in 2022. In the same period FRA data shows train accidents of all causes except grade crossings were up and down 2015-2017 but somewhat steady overall. Then climbing to a peak in 2019 before declining into the 2015-2017 levels in 2022. You can filter by cause such as mechanical/electrical equipment defects as well. Those are on a similar pattern running in the 20’s up to 40’s and dropping back down. I don’t see a clear correlation between employment and accidents. Perhaps an increase 2015 through 2019 was related to a reduction in employment but then why the decline in accidents after 2019? Here’s the data sources.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/char ... -employees

https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/Officeof ... ally3.aspx

I was curious what a median time from indicators of a bearing failure presenting to catastrophic failure might be. A simple question without a simple answer. In the security video if that volume of spark was solely a bearing failure it seems pretty well along. The FRA did some bearing defect study but running to failure wasn’t part of the test. They do mention a failure mode developing that was not picked up on thermal or acoustic monitoring.

https://railroads.dot.gov/elibrary/roll ... est-report

This guy on the Cumberland Mine Railroad says the car went over a detector o.k. and derailed 6-1/2 miles later. Nothing about the accuracy of the detector indication. The Cumberland is a 17 mile isolated railroad. https://youtu.be/mUIznMVqN3k

I came across this piece as well with some interesting information on bearing failure modes.

http://railcar-tech.org/wp-content/uplo ... -20-05.pdf

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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R Bedell wrote:
Wed Feb 15, 2023 6:31 am
Here's what NS did that makes them negligent:
-Drastically cut workforce including car mechanical staffing
-Reduced time per railcar inspection in half
-Forced employees to overlook safety and get the job done
-Created a culture of human robots who no longer value their careers and are just simply depressed
That is YOUR opinion and not legal argument(s) in a Court of Law.

When the dust settles and all the facts come out, it may simply be a mechanical failure.
There's indisputable evidence that the first three are true, I don't know where you've been. These arguments are absolutely going to hold weight in court when the residents of the town give NS's legal team the ride of their lives.
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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PatAzo wrote:
Wed Feb 15, 2023 9:03 am
Macrotends.net shows NS having 30,000 employees in 2015, then making a steady decline to a low of 18,000 in 2021 and up to 19,000 in 2022. In the same period FRA data shows train accidents of all causes except grade crossings were up and down 2015-2017 but somewhat steady overall. Then climbing to a peak in 2019 before declining into the 2015-2017 levels in 2022. You can filter by cause such as mechanical/electrical equipment defects as well.
A few friends and I were having this discussion recently. The data doesn't appear to differentiate between Class I, passenger, and shortlines, so it's difficult determine any accurate correlation. Keeping the spotlight on NS though, does anybody know an NS employee who thinks the job is safer than it was 10 years ago? Or any Class I for that matter? I sure don't.
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.


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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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Schteinkuh wrote:
Wed Feb 15, 2023 10:14 am
A few friends and I were having this discussion recently. The data doesn't appear to differentiate between Class I, passenger, and shortlines, so it's difficult determine any accurate correlation. Keeping the spotlight on NS though, does anybody know an NS employee who thinks the job is safer than it was 10 years ago? Or any Class I for that matter? I sure don't.
It takes a bit of digging to get to the spot you can sort by railroad. The 10 year overview page is easier to use. Set the reporting level to "Individual Railroads".

https://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/Officeof ... rview.aspx

What does a routine car inspection consist of?

I know former CN engineer who recently retired. I asked a few years ago if was ever nervous. Things like rounding a curve that he could meet another train coming the other way. He said no that he knew he was where he was supposed to be and had to depend on everyone else to be where they were supposed to be. He was mostly frustrated with dealing with ex-IC people who ignored the contracts and conductors who wouldn't call signals.

A friend of a friend is an NS conductor. Last I talked with him he was far more interested in talking about how to sabotage operations than safety. Things like setting excess numbers of hand brakes on inbound cars and turning up retainers on outbound trains. This was at the height of the contract dispute.

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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There's indisputable evidence that the first three are true, I don't know where you've been. These arguments are absolutely going to hold weight in court
Well, that is your opinion.

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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PatAzo wrote:
Wed Feb 15, 2023 12:00 pm
A friend of a friend is an NS conductor. Last I talked with him he was far more interested in talking about how to sabotage operations than safety. Things like setting excess numbers of hand brakes on inbound cars and turning up retainers on outbound trains. This was at the height of the contract dispute.
Railroaders love being miserable. They'll complain all day about how much their job sucks and they should get paid more, but ultimately they almost never leave. Funny enough most stay because they know its the best pay + benefits + retirement they'll likely ever find.

Not surprised about the sabotage. Most of it is probably venting, but I'm sure there are some people who partake. There are a lot of people who forget that it's a contract negotiation not a we demand x and won't take anything less sort of exercise. People really whip each other up into frenzies, too. Lots of guys will simply invent crap that they know will get a rise out of their coworkers and try to poison the craft-management relationship as much as possible. Usually it comes from the guys who are always miserable, and they don't like it when other people aren't miserable. It is true, misery loves company.
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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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Saturnalia wrote:
Wed Feb 15, 2023 7:20 pm
Railroaders love being miserable. They'll complain all day about how much their job sucks and they should get paid more, but ultimately they almost never leave. Funny enough most stay because they know its the best pay + benefits + retirement they'll likely ever find.

People really whip each other up into frenzies, too. Lots of guys will simply invent crap that they know will get a rise out of their coworkers and try to poison the craft-management relationship as much as possible. Usually it comes from the guys who are always miserable, and they don't like it when other people aren't miserable. It is true, misery loves company.
So just because it's "the best they'll get" means they deserve a job that treats them like crap? And they don't want to get paid more, they want to spend time with family and friends.

Also "poison the craft-management relationship" is hilarious, made me chuckle even.

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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means they deserve a job that treats them like crap?
This is true for any job, is there someone holding a gun to their head ???

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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The unions and the carriers long ago made the proverbial deal with the devil exchanging above average wages for unpredictable work schedules. While I favor conservative politics and business I also recognize that Wall Street will milk most anything in its hands into ruin. As the carriers began leaning out their operations the work schedules have become more demanding. No one is forced to work at the railroad. At the same time that is no excuse for abusing the work force. If you look through the FRA safety data you will note accidents due to human factors have been on the increase as employment decline.

Does this relate to the East Palestine derailment? No one will know for sure.

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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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R Bedell wrote:
Wed Feb 15, 2023 3:12 pm
Well, that is your opinion.
R Bedell wrote:
Thu Feb 16, 2023 6:26 am
This is true for any job, is there someone holding a gun to their head ???
Don't believe me? Listen to the former head of the FRA: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ohio-t ... kJy3jCgUX4
Saturnalia wrote:
Wed Feb 15, 2023 7:20 pm
Railroaders love being miserable. They'll complain all day about how much their job sucks and they should get paid more, but ultimately they almost never leave. Funny enough most stay because they know its the best pay + benefits + retirement they'll likely ever find.
Spoken like a man in a high tower. Does rr retirement take 34% of your paycheck? Would you tolerate what your guys go through for the pay they're getting right now? I won't disagree that there definitely are some railroaders out there who are just insufferable and their misery is contagious, but hell, most of these long haulers in our industry are on their third marriage and have a crap relationship with their kids. I'd be miserable too.
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Re: East Palestine, Ohio Major NS Derailment

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I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but apparently several journalists covering this story have been arrested, which is very concerning.

I have two other questions:

If congress created an investigation, what harm could they inflict on NS?

Could the FRA/NTSB make NS cease their operations until they can prove that their operation is *somewhat* safe?

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