I worked in this industry for many years. The railroads were always hyper-focused on increasing throughput. I left the industry about ten years ago, but back then derailments were considered the most significant risk to average network speed. At the time, average network speed was roughly correlated with profit. The rule of thumb was a 1 mph increase in average network speed was worth about $100MM in profit. That was 15 years ago.<p>There were a lot of systems in place to monitor rolling stock:<p>- Wheel Impact Detectors<p>- Hotbox detectors<p>- Acoustic bearing detectors<p>- Truck performance detectors<p>To name just a few. There were also efforts to monitor the railway infrastructure. The things I remember:<p>- Rail stress management (rails need to be under the right amount of stress, which of course varies with temperature)<p>- Top of rail friction management<p>- Rail profile management (the name eludes me, but the idea is you want the interface between the rail and wheel to meet certain parameters)<p>I worked on the rolling stock side measuring wheel impacts, overloads, imbalances, and a handful of more esoteric metrics. One of the outputs of these measurements was a train consist. For each of our locations we were able to build up the consist of the entire train (which was a fun CS problem in itself).<p>I stared at a lot of consists over the years. In North America I never saw anything longer than about 100 cars and 2-4 locos. However, in Northwest Australia they routinely ran 300 car trains meeting the description in this article. But, the reason they could get away with that is they were running a straight shot from the heart of the Pilbara to one of the port towns on the north west shoulder (Karratha and Port Hedland).<p>I need to check in with my old colleagues and see if things have changed. It wouldn't surprise me if train lengths have gotten longer, but I would be surprised if this correlated with a large increase in derailments, as that would have a tremendous impact on average network speed and thus profit.<p>As someone mentioned elsewhere on this thread, there are a lot of single track corridors. It's bad enough when one train has to sidetrack. It's really bad when a train takes out the whole corridor. These aren't packet switched networks. It's not easy to reroute. And it's really expensive and difficult to lay new rail.
I also live in Ames, Iowa, where the author resides. I live less than a mile from the track segment he is talking about, owned and operated by Union Pacific. While I'm pretty skeptical of this author's individual concerns given the twice-removed nature of the statements from their "source", trains have unmistakably gotten longer during my 15 years near these tracks, and they are moving faster.<p>A hazmat situation impacting only a one-mile radius around the tracks could effect up to 30 to 40 thousand people here. I interned for Union Pacific while in college, and yes, the company will state that safety is their number one priority, but it was very clear that their business was to profit by optimizing every single little part of their business for maximum efficiency. The company has an open distain for regulations, especially safety-related regulations, and did not shy away from sharing those views internally. I would not be at all surprised if crews are being abused, and safety sidelined, for the sake of maximizing profit.
> For myself: I believe it is Wall Street greed and investor demands. 16,450-foot trains weighing more than 42 million pounds are gratifying someone with power. Someone who wants it all and more. I believe it is those few, who live nowhere near here, who own their own private islands and jets. This is far removed from laissez faire economics, or the neo liberal model, coming out of the 1980s.<p>This was an incredibly common economic outlook coming from the Midwest and South. It's both tickling and sad to hear. I do love the way this was written, and those PSR trains sound like a nightmare. When I worked the network engineering desk for a Class I railroad we took derails seriously to the extent of pulling anyone who made changes to infra to the dispatchers themselves. That wasn't that long ago either but it sounds like a lot has changed.
The government data I am able to find does not seem to support the idea that there is a massive (or any) increase in derailments. And this letter never provides any data supporting the premise either.<p>According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there were 1,056 train derailments (both cargo and passenger) in the US in 2021. This was the lowest number in the dataset going back to 1975.<p>Ten years ago, it was 1,470 derailments. In the year 2000, it was over 2,000 derailments.<p>In reality, the data suggest we are on a strong downward trend in derailments per year.<p>Is this government data wrong? Or is this writer trying out a career in fiction?<p>Data: <a href="https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-accidents-type-accidenta" rel="nofollow">https://www.bts.gov/content/train-fatalities-injuries-and-ac...</a>
During the first covid summer, with a friend, we studied two interesting points for the future: oil consumption relative to GDP (irrelevant here), and what is sometime called demographic dividend, or how infrastructure spending during time of growth will allow an aging population an easier life in the future. Since we thought western countries to be all the same, we studied France and its infrastructure cost, then China, then the other Brics, plus Turkey and some ex-colonial nation that got f*cked off their own demographic dividend by the west.<p>What we are sure off: maintenance is immensly cheaper than construction, three to five order of magnitude in most cases, and improvement upon existing infrastructure is one to two order of magnitude cheaper. From this, we also concluded that subsidizing an almost empty line on the west coast during more than twenty year actually was a net positive operation for the French government, and killing small train tracks is in 99% of case a mistake.<p>My really friendly advice to americans, whatever their political leaning: do not kill your rail, improve on it even. This will be a net positive for your country, even if atm it seems like it is loosing you money. You can't afford to not maintain your infrastructure, or to forget about it.
Speaking with railroader friends changed my mind on train unions.<p>To an outsider, they sound terribly unreasonable, but speaking with people in the trenches has made me a believer in these unions, for whatever that is worth.
I can't help but wonder if this sort of stuff would already be banned in the USA had the Lac-Mégantic disaster happened 35km or so further south.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaster" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9gantic_rail_disaste...</a><p><a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/recit-numerique/891/bande-dessinee-lac-megantic-la-derniere-nuit" rel="nofollow">https://ici.radio-canada.ca/recit-numerique/891/bande-dessin...</a>
This calls for (not really) malicious compliance. There is a phone number at all train crossings (at least in my state) to call and let them know if there are issues or if a train made you wait too long. The amount of time you can be made to wait at a crossing varies by state. Find out that time, and call the number posted at the crossing or look it up in advance and complain every time your wait violates the law/rules. You will get train size reduced. Get everyone you know to call in and enforce the rules. I call every time I have to wait longer than the rule.
I'm struggling with the first paragraph:<p>> A fellow engineer passed along information from another engineer, who I have never met, Mike, 17 years an engineer, like me, with a degree, like me (art, English), which has led to writing this body.<p>Am I reading this right? The content of this article is hearsay twice removed?
Trains derailing regularly is consider acceptable and to be expected, infrastructure being tasked with jobs for which it was not designed, calls for more resources ignored, policy makers prioritizing profit over safe and efficient transportation of goods.<p>This sounds like something from a fictional dystopian novel.
This just in: the Surface Transportation Board is requesting additional data from the Class Is for reasons that sound highly relevant to the original article. <a href="https://www.progressiverailroading.com/federal_legislation_regulation/news/STB-to-require-railroads-to-report-more-rail-service-employment-data--66526" rel="nofollow">https://www.progressiverailroading.com/federal_legislation_r...</a><p>My time in rail was all related to positive train control (PTC), which is a safety overlay that stops the train before anything bad happens, at least in theory. The railroads generally despised the idea because it would slow down overall network velocity. It was only when it was mandated that they really got started with it beyond science projects.<p>I'm pretty far from rail these days, so I know I'm out of date. But as I recall, the prediction algorithms didn't work as well with distributed power (locomotive in the middle of the train, almost required for trains this long). So it's entirely possible that these super-long trains aren't able to predict unsafe conditions. I also vaguely recall they didn't predict anything to do with buff and draft forces (or other in-train forces) that could lead to the kind of derailments the article discussed.<p>This seems odd given the safety culture of railroads (every meeting I attended as a vendor, even if it was just a handful of people who had known each other for years, started with a safety briefing that included evacuation instructions and who was CPR qualified, along with tripping hazards and such). But around the time I was leaving the industry, CSX was spending lots of millions of dollars to bring the (now-late) Hunter Harrison in to implement Precision Scheduled Railroading. That led to a rush for other roads to implement it, to the point where I believe BNSF is the only Class I that does not do PSR. And PSR is all about reducing costs, cutting manpower, mothballing locomotives—which absolutely could lead to the sort of stuff this article is about. And, because it is (at least was) so fashionable in the industry, a road moving away from PSR (whether announced or just in practice) would likely see a stock price plunge and a CEO change.<p>Makes me wonder if, stuck between a rock and a hard place (ballast and the rail?), the roads are hoping the STB steps in and makes a rule to stop their game of chicken.
People are also leaving because the schedules they have to keep are unpredictable and horrible. My brother-in-law worked for a bit as an engineer, and as a person low on the totem pole, got bad assignments (all of the more senior people took the decent ones) and often didn't have a schedule until a day or two before the train was scheduled to leave. It hurt his social life substantially, because he couldn't plan on anything. Then COVID hit, and even though the company has hurting for people to run the trains, he was furloughed "until further notice" with no potential return date. Honestly, the companies are doing this to themselves with poor management.
The most concrete thing I read in the article seems to be:<p>"These trains exceed the coupler and drawbar limits of the very cars themselves."<p>This seems like something that can be explicitly proven true or false, so I would be interested to see whether that claim is true on investigation.
<i>To run even a, say, “simple” traditional grain train—6,700 feet, 28 million pounds—through the ice fog of a late February night, applying the physics of the horsepower and weight to a landscape you cannot see, but must know—every inch of, every hill and dip, every crossing, every signal mast is something no office worker can imagine.</i><p>Why are train engineers expected to know every nuance of the route, when it should be trivial to do fine-grained GPS maps of the tracks and provide moving map displays that could show every hill and dip, every crossing, every signal mast. This shouldn't be left up to the memory of the engineers.<p>There's already automation that could enforce speed limits, but for some reason it relies on track-side equipment so isn't universally available:<p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amtrak-derail-washington-positive-train-control-tech-2017-12" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/amtrak-derail-washington-pos...</a>
The advancements in equipment to clean up after a large and/or complicated derailments contributes to these "acceptable" number of derailments. This includes roadbed, rail, and specialized equipment to move cars and locomotives. There are even 3rd party companies that specialize in railroad derailments.<p>Large wrecks can be cleaned up in 24 hours.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkui84o6rNA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkui84o6rNA</a>
There are several hot takes on the accuracy of various numbers (train derailment, for example), but that is not the most striking point of the article. The article is raising alarms about labor shortages and the effect on safety and deliverability of large loads (monster trains). It is another data point to bolster the idea that the US supply chain is under a lot of stress.
So if I understand this correctly, shorter trains are better because when they derail they take down less cars? Or are super long trains harder to control in varied terrain? Both probably.
> I have given up enormous amounts of home and family life for insurance, for a living wage, for a trade that is respectable.<p>I think this is the problem - paying people in respect that you can't make a meal of. And what does the living wage mean? That you can come back from work, eat a meal and have somewhere to sleep?
It's interesting that people are happy to be taxed to teeth, having very little in exchange and do nothing about the fact that corporations their work for don't pay much and if their bosses pay taxes, then it means they got lame accountants.
Recently made video summarizes the current situation (for those of us not familiar with it) : "Freight Trains in the US Are a Disaster Waiting to Happen" [<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9cc4Et-3Ck" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9cc4Et-3Ck</a>]<p>I was once chewed-out by an employer for arriving a few minutes late after waiting for a mile-long coal train to crawl past the only entrance to the town at 15mph. (A rarity at the time.) 16,450 feet? Wuf-da.
What innovations or ideas have been presented to reduce derailments?<p>What would it take to build a train that could sacrifice one car (i.e. let it derail) to save the rest of the train from the same fate?<p>Start by instrumenting each car and coupling with inertial and spatial sensors. Gather some stability control engineers from the automotive industry perhaps. What could be done?
This letter/article raises some great points. However, the writing style is kind of obtuse. The whole commentary-on-a-letter-I-received shtick makes this difficult to follow. It doesn't add anything either; you can read only the quoted paragraphs and understand the entire message while reading only half the article.
A side-by-side study of American and Chinese railways, perhaps a compare-and-contrast investigative journalism article, would make for interesting reading. China seems well ahead of the USA here:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_China" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_China</a><p>> "China's railways are the busiest in the world. In 2019, railways in China delivered 3.660 billion passenger trips, generating 1,470.66 billion passenger-kilometres and carried 4.389 billion tonnes of freight, generating 3,018 billion cargo tonne-kilometres. Freight traffic turnover has increased more than fivefold over the period 1980-2013 and passenger traffic turnover has increased more than sevenfold over the same period. During the five years 2016-2020, China's railway network handled 14.9 billion passenger trips, 9 billion of which were completed by bullet trains, the remaining 5.9 billion by conventional rail."<p>I'm assuming that in the USA the major rail owners don't want to invest in infrastructure upgrades, and longer trains mean lower labor costs? The US government doesn't want to raise taxes to pay for massive infrastructure projects (FDR New Deal programs are not on the horizon for either party), so nobody will pick up the required bill and infrastructure will just continue degrading to Third World status?<p>The only new rail development being backed by the federal government looks like oil export trains in Utah... not exactly in line with Biden rhetoric on climate and renewable energy.<p><a href="https://grist.org/politics/an-oil-train-is-set-to-destroy-pristine-utah-mountains-why-wont-biden-stop-it/" rel="nofollow">https://grist.org/politics/an-oil-train-is-set-to-destroy-pr...</a>
It's a shame this type of operation is so common.<p>The people at the top that have no experience of work on the ground making decisions that affect people doing that important work.
I don't know the facts, but I do know a few WSJ reporters and read their paper every day.<p>Unlike most of what passes as "journalism" these days, these people actually do still practice journalism. So if monster trains are derailing, or even causing major delays, they will be on it. And people in Congress all read the WSJ.
I've always been puzzled by the rail industry, since in spite of having incredible potential for efficiency, it seems stuck in so many ways by history.<p>In this case, the impression I get is that we're seeing the result of too much hands-off self-organization. Sure, it's capitalism, but the Invisible Hand has never been conceived as the <i>only</i> factor driving behavior. Perhaps we should be reluctant to involve government, at least in making standards. But all industries have endo-regulation - internally decided protocols. Does this industry just need encouragement in that direction? Something like the ISO/ECMA/IETF bodies that have produced so much computer-related standardization?<p>Three-mile trains sound like a problem - but surely this is an empirical issue. I think part of what's missing is a clear, full-throated statement about where the industry is going. That it's not obsolete (which many people assume), and that it could use some further development in basics. Too often, public discussion on trains devolves into finger-pointing about why the country has no fast commuter routes (and the prodigious amounts of cash that have been poured onto that issue...)<p>Containerization was one of the best things to happen to the rail industry. But surely this sort of evolution would benefit from stewardship across industry, institutional and governmental groups. I'd love to know what the state of the industry is with respect to things like tracking, logistical responsiveness, smart/iot instrumentation, human interfaces, etc.
The American workforce has been redlining on poorly staffed overworked jobs for decades. It's not surprising that we're losing workers left and right to fatigue. They treat the equipment better than the people who are doing the job and that is saying something because the equipment is poorly maintained as well. Nurses, doctors, teachers, railroad workers, truckers, clerks, salespeople, developers, builders, contractors, and everyone else.<p>However, with our current political system, the solutions to these problems are nearly impossible to accomplish. Unions, socialized health care, workers rights, mandated vacation time, overtime limits, minimum wages, and UBI are all lightyears away. Instead our politicians are stripping women of their human rights and attacking children while placing migrants into concentration camps.
What's with the early 20th / late 19th century style of English? Entertaining for a moment, but ultimately just frustrating for me to read. Is it done purposely because trains are an "old" piece of transportation infrastructure?
The good thing about this particular problem is that it <i>will</i> be corrected by the market mechanic regardless of what the government does. Companies have to compete for labor now - the landscape has changed. Some will not adapt and they'll go out of business. That's not to say that we shouldn't also explore policy action, but when workers have the upper hand it's probably best to let the market just figure it out, and then come in with policy after that.