This photo taken with a drone shows continuing to clear sections of a Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed Friday night in East Palestine, Ohio, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023 .
Gene J. Puskar | AP
One hour later car 28 South Norfolk train derailed Saturday in Springfield, Ohio — the third incident to a freight rail line in just over a month, including a toxic disaster in East Palestine, Ohio — internal emails show railroad officials is making extensive safety adjustments to the railcars.
internal South Norfolk Emails sent on Sunday and obtained by CNBC with a timestamp approximately 11 hours after the latest derailment indicate that Norfolk Southern is planning to reduce train times to prevent future problems. Sources told CNBC that the email was given to Norfolk’s South yard managers, who are union employees in charge of stacking trains.
A Norfolk Southern spokesperson told CNBC that the guidance has been updated and the carrier is now requiring any trains above 10,000 feet to use distributed energy, meaning the trains will be powered. from several positions along the length of the train, not just from the front. Distributed locomotives are controlled wirelessly from the main locomotive in terms of both power and braking as needed.
Norfolk Southern told CNBC that other rail carriers are now adopting this safety measure.
“At Norfolk Southern, the safety of our employees and the communities we serve comes first,” wrote Connor Spielmaker, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern, by email. “Part of increasing safety is constantly evaluating how we operate our network, and we’re looking at immediate ways to achieve that. Today, as an interim step, we’re looking at how we’re doing. I am ensuring that all trains longer than 10,000 feet are operated with distributed power. We will build on this temporary change to advance policies that are ultimately class-appropriate. section of our railroad.”
Norfolk Southern told CNBC it is actively reviewing all safety protocols to ensure trains are operating appropriately across the network.
However, Jeremy Ferguson, president of SMART-Transportation Division, the country’s largest railway union, said his workers are being told that railways will limit train lengths.
“I looked at Norfolk Southern’s documents for the groundskeepers [Monday] “The train that derailed on Saturday was already electrically distributed, so their comments to CNBC were meaningless,” Ferguson said. I would say it’s a good move by Norfolk Southern to take the right steps in reducing the length of the trains, because the trains are so long.”
Train length was a contentious issue for the rail industry and labor unions in the negotiations. Rail lines now run on what is known as a precision scheduled rail line, or PSR, which has resulted in much longer trains – up to three miles long.
Trains are stacked based on destination rather than weight distribution, with the first destination stacked at the top of the train and in sequence until the last disembarkation.
Rail lines have redesigned train lengths in an effort to use fewer people and move more cars with fewer locomotives, reducing costs and generating higher profits. But rail unions and customers have raised concerns about safety and service.
The Springfield derailment marks the third derailment since the East Palestine train disaster of February 3, in which hazardous materials were spilled.
On February 16, a 135-car Norfolk Southern train traveling from Detroit to Peru, Indiana, derailed about 14 miles outside the yard in Romulus, Michigan. According to the investigative report on that incident, tonnage records showed heavy carriages at the front, middle and rear, with empty carriages scattered everywhere.
The derailment is still under investigation, but according to an on-site investigative report, human error could have been a big factor: An “engineer panicked and applied the dynamic brake forcefully, resulting in the use of emergency braking and derailment.”
The National Transportation Safety Board announced it was sending investigators to the Springfield site.
