Commentary

Safety won’t improve with incomplete, inaccurate data

What a world. FRA is on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. NTSB is on Twitter and YouTube, and might be on Facebook, but I don’t know since the NTSB website doesn’t say one way or another, and I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, and not, to my knowledge on YouTube, or if I am, it’s not my doing, I promise.

Commentary

The ongoing crew consist size debate

The battle between labor and the management over mandatory two-person crews is far from over and will heat up if a new Democratic-controlled Congress takes charge in 2019. Hoping for big Democratic wins in the U.S. House and Senate later this year, railroad labor quietly continues to set the stage to push for mandatory two-person train crew legislation.

Charges reinstated against engineer in Amtrak wreck

A judge in Philadelphia on Tuesday reinstated criminal charges against the engineer in the fatal 2015 derailment of Amtrak Northeast Regional train 188 that killed eight passengers and injured more than 150.

Amtrak 501 wreck: Engineer “missed” approach sign

The engineer of Amtrak Cascades 501, which derailed on Dec. 18, 2017 in DuPont, Wash., has told the National Transportation Safety Board that he does not recall seeing an approach sign with a speed restriction placed two miles before the 30-mph curve upon which the derailment occurred.

Commentary

Accidents that didn’t have to happen

On Dec. 18, 2017, Amtrak 501, the first Cascades passenger train operating over the Point Defiance Bypass in Washington State, careened off the rails as it entered a 30-mph speed-restricted curve at 80 mph. The investigations into the accident’s cause may take a year, even two.

UPDATED DEC. 20: Overspeed cause of Amtrak Cascades fatal derailment

Three people were killed and more than 70 were injured as an Amtrak Cascades train derailed early Dec. 18 while traversing a curve leading into an overpass at Interstate 5 southwest of Tacoma, Wash., sending a locomotive and passenger cars crashing onto the highway below.

Commentary

Culture wars, Part 3

The National Transportation Safety Board, in its investgation into the April 3, 2016 fatal train accident involving Amtrak train 89 and maintenance-of-way equipment at Chester, Pa., made some damning determinations. I do mean damning, as in “leave your pass with the secretary, clean out your desk, and get off the property” damning.

NTSB reauthorization bill aims to increase transparency

A bill reauthorizing the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was introduced last week in the Senate and aims to enhance the board’s safety investigations through added transparency.

Conrail restores NJT service in less than three days

It took Conrail maintenance-of-way forces less than three days to repair heavy damage to its Lehigh Line, a busy main line used by New Jersey Transit Raritan Valley Line (RVL) passenger trains and CSX and Norfolk Southern freights, following the derailment of a 141-car CSX mixed freight late on the afternoon of Dec. 8.

Commentary

NTSB missed the mark

The NTSB analysis of the 2016 Amtrak backhoe accident on the Northeast Corridor at Chester, Pa., that killed two m/w workers and injured 39 has missed the mark. This incident is by no means the first of its kind.

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