Railway Safety Act of 2023

And guess what's coming down the line. Ohio's senators (Democrat and Republican) are introducing the Railway Safety Act of 2023.

https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/p ... b9mS5gGiKs

They link to the preliminary bill text above, but let me see if I can reduce it down:

• Direct the Secretary of Transportation to issue regulations within 1 year of the law getting enacted.
• Regulations cover shipping of hazardous material not subject to high-hazard flammable train regulations (Title 49 Section 174.310) -- shippers/rail carriers will be required to follow it with respect to operations and tank car maintenance
• ...Shipper/rail carrier has to provide advance notice of the transportation of said hazardous material to every emergency response agency along the route, including a gas discharge plan. This includes those from high-hazard flammable trains.
• ...Shipper/rail carrier has to "reduce or eliminate blocked crossing resulting from delays in train movements"
• ...regulations on train length, weight, consist, route analysis and selection, speed restrictions, track standards, maintenance requirements, signaling/train control, response plans, and "any other requirements that the Secretary deems are necessary."
• Enact inspection requirements including minimum time requirements for inspectors to spend per car/locomotive, with separate time requirements for hazardous materials, and tweaking pre-departure inspections.
• Standardize defect detector installation, repair, testing, maintenance, and operation via regulation
• Require the Class I's put a hotbox detector every 10 miles.

In addition...

• Audit all the Federal rail car inspection programs within 60 days of law enactment for compliance with Title 49 part 215.
• Re-audit all class I railroads at least once every five years.
• A sample group of Class II/III railroads get audited every year, determined by the Secretary of Transportation
• If the audit fails, the railroad has to fix the inspection program ASAP.
• Audits will ask everyone, including the unions, for info (documents and testimony)
• Railroads and all railroad employees (including unions) have to cooperate with the audits. Non-compliance gets reported to Congress.
• Every 3 years, Title 49 Part 215 gets reviewed for any needed updates.
• Every year, the Secretary of Transportation has to publish a summary report of audit findings and updates to Title 49 Part 215.

A second section, the "Safe Freight Act of 2023" mandates the following:

• 2 crew member freight trains, minimum. 1 conductor, 1 engineer, during normal operations.
• Exceptions include non-main-line track operations; freight operated by railroads under 400K total employee work hours and less than $40M annual revenue (adjusted for inflation), speeds no more than 25 MPH, track less than 2% grade over any segment of at least 2 continuous miles; rescue locomotives; assistive locomotives (aka pushers for Altoona); locomotives not attach to anything or only to a caboose, but travels no less than 30 miles; operations that were 1 person at the time of enactment but achieve equal levels of safety from above compliance.
• Exceptions to the exceptions include consists that have at least 1 car full of a toxic-by-inhalation material; 20+ tanks of flammable liquid in one continuous block or 35+ tanks in the entire consist; trains with a total length of at least 7500 feet (roughly 88+ cars plus engines)
• Waivers can be applied for.
• Penalties are jacked up ten-fold at the minimum and top at up to 1% of annual operating income.
• DOT-111 spec rail tank cars that don't comply to DOT-117/117P/117R requirements can't be used to transport flammable liquids, starting May 1st 2025 (2025-05-01).
• The Class 1's get taxed $1M yearly to fund emergency response hazardous material training for first responders via grants.
• $22M is dedicated for research grants into better wayside defect detectors through the FRA
• $5M is dedicated for research into stronger/safer tank cars, valves, and other safety features through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration

Interesting stuff!

Track maintenance seems to be a significant issue on NS. They dropped another train in Ohio last night. The Honorable Representative Turner of Ohio is on Meet the Press, and he just publicly slammed NS for the incident.

Note I said IS. I saw that slam live.

John_Perkowski wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:13 am Track maintenance seems to be a significant issue on NS. They dropped another train in Ohio last night. The Honorable Representative Turner of Ohio is on Meet the Press, and he just publicly slammed NS for the incident.

Note I said IS. I saw that slam live.

It's been that way for almost a decade now. I remember one year I took the train to Pittsburgh and the Pennsy had to reverse *TWICE* to get to the right track to continue traveling. We were told about it each time, but we still came in under the padding at 8pm.

At least it's double-tracked... but I wish a few stations had more platforms and one station wasn't on a *!)@#( interlock!

AAR has a counter proposal that may be doable... and possibly avoid knee-jerk legislation.


https://www.aar.org/news/freight-railro ... accidents/#!

Detectors every 15 miles and new thresholds seems reasonable.

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

Detectors – Spacing:
I note that while the existing has a 'key routes...hazardous" constraint, and they are keeping that in place. Will they agree to NOT carry hazardous stock on all other trackage?

Detectors – Shared Trending Analysis
This clearly would have prevented the East Palestine disaster, if done correctly. It's not all that hard to accomplish.

C3RS
This is a major about face; and to me indication how worried they are. But as working pilots have told me, ASRS works because everyone in aviation {cough MCAS} thinks safety all the time; it's far less clear how effective it will be in an industry without that posture.

Tank Car Improvement:
This does not address the issues NTSB brought up; rather it is another "we'll look at it.."

eolesen wrote: ↑Wed Mar 08, 2023 11:43 am AAR has a counter proposal that may be doable... and possibly avoid knee-jerk legislation.

https://www.aar.org/news/freight-railro ... accidents/#!

Detectors every 15 miles and new thresholds seems reasonable.

They saw regulation coming and committed to improvements.

Still, it's a half measure. More data is needed, so I'm leaning more towards the bill.

This is apparently in reaction to the East Palestine derailment. IMO, Congress should've waited until the investigation was complete. This would've allowed them to include more specifics in the bill instead of tossing more power to the bureaucrats.

CLamb wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 11:30 pm This is apparently in reaction to the East Palestine derailment. IMO, Congress should've waited until the investigation was complete. This would've allowed them to include more specifics in the bill instead of tossing more power to the bureaucrats.

It's just been introduced. It'll get refined (watered down) over time.

As an out sider looking in with interest. I watched those hearings. One thing stuck out and I question what I heard. Is there a "real time" information requirement for the train crew? Seems to me having detectors send temperature info to the dispatch and not the engineers is a little off. I saw this little exchange and with all the other "stuff" that was kick around THIS is the one that made most impact to me. Seems like the "Automation" , take the information and decision process out of the locomotives and back in some remote location is part of the problem. Is this as things are? Did I hear this right? Here, take a listen:
https://rumble.com/v2es1ky-one-reason-w ... -list.html

afleetcommand wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 10:10 am As an out sider looking in with interest. I watched those hearings. One thing stuck out and I question what I heard. Is there a "real time" information requirement for the train crew? Seems to me having detectors send temperature info to the dispatch and not the engineers is a little off. I saw this little exchange and with all the other "stuff" that was kick around THIS is the one that made most impact to me. Seems like the "Automation" , take the information and decision process out of the locomotives and back in some remote location is part of the problem. Is this as things are? Did I hear this right? Here, take a listen:
https://rumble.com/v2es1ky-one-reason-w ... -list.html

Most defect detectors will only call out to the engineer ether a failure with location or a pass message. As far as I know, there's only a few on CSX's southern lines that do a comprehensive check and send up data to dispatch... and there's no standard for it to boot.

Yeah, CSX is experimenting with this new giant defect detector that visually scans the whole train. I haven’t heard how well they work though.

afleetcommand wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 10:10 am As an out sider looking in with interest. I watched those hearings. One thing stuck out and I question what I heard. Is there a "real time" information requirement for the train crew? Seems to me having detectors send temperature info to the dispatch and not the engineers is a little off. I saw this little exchange and with all the other "stuff" that was kick around THIS is the one that made most impact to me. Seems like the "Automation" , take the information and decision process out of the locomotives and back in some remote location is part of the problem. Is this as things are? Did I hear this right? Here, take a listen:
https://rumble.com/v2es1ky-one-reason-w ... -list.html

I think the "real time" information to the train crew is that a bearing on axle N exceeded the temperature threshold; the data to dispatch is the actual temperature of all bearings. In another forum (maybe in Railway Age), it was suggested that really useful information would be change in temperature of the bearings between readings, which, assuming that change triggers an alert, would require a detector->"cloud"->crew near real time alerting (which is totally possible with the radio systems in use today).

Point seems to be missed in that the information is available with existing detection, but the data is sent to a remote site not to trained operators running this large piece of equipment. I've noticed the train "culture" is different. The focus is on the equipment & chain of command s to speak vs. a focus on how to most efficiently get and process the data already available with the tools and resources at hand. The rate of rise of temperature is something east to collect and map now. A curve fitting algorithm is simple ( ex computer / CAD/CAM soft ware was in my past ) . The reports state the temperature and time were sent to the dispatch and in the supporting case the obvious conclusion was in fact over ruled from afar. Any one who has seen diabetics and the reporting real time blood sugar rate of change on their freakin cell phone that force literally life and death decisions daily will understand the curve fitting and simple rate of change analysis is and has been available for decades. It's the culture in the railroad industry that would isolate the crew number one and focus on the data sensing and collecting as if that's the issue number two NEITHER are the issue. The culture is. The 100 year battle between the companies and the Union is. The attempt to turn a personnel & management style into one about technology is. I'm not sure if the true issue can be healed is the point until one of the Class ones does a complete melt down and has to be rebuilt from the bottom up. That is my take away unfortunately. The train crew needs to have real time information and the trust and training to deal with it. This central command approach moving towards remote control and automation is a product of a century of conflict. Until that is healed, the companies are driven to keep train crews out of the "command" loop as modus opporendi I'm afraid. Sad state of affairs. This PSR drives the equation harder as the rigid requirement for a definable and predictable schedule over rides the need for local control of the trains. I saw this same thing happen back when a concept of "Just in time" manufacturing was the rage with automated manufacturing . Mixing the requirements of human intervention with the desire for predictable results was..... fun to watch. Because then as now in a different industry, the variations and unpredictable nature of simply physics required local decisions to be made that weren't in the algorithms.

This popped up on the Trains Newswire:

Click here to read “Railway Safety Act advances out of committee”

Brief, Fair Use quote:

But railroads continue to take issue with provisions requiring two-person crews, regulating wayside detectors, and increasing rules for transportation of hazardous materials, Jefferies (added: Ian Jeffries, CEO of AAR) said: “In a piece of safety legislation, each provision should be clearly designed to rectify a current safety challenge. As reported out of the Committee, this bill falls short of that goal.”

Did The Journal ever tee off on this proposed legislation today:

Fair Use:

It pays to be wary of politicians rushing out legislation after an accident or disaster, and the Railway Safety Act is a classic of the genre. It uses February’s train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, to enact a Big Labor priority.

The bill is courtesy of Ohio’s Senate duo, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican J.D. Vance. Norfolk Southern railroad is covering the more than $800 million cost to clean up the hazardous chemicals, but the Senators say their bill is meant to head off future accidents.

Topper has been whipped too long and too hard for this incident that did not result in any injuries resulting from the derailment.