A CONCATENATION OF FAILURES?

On Super Bowl Sunday, conditions at Cold Spring Shops headquarters were favorable for a start to the outdoor grilling season.  By Wednesday night, though, the worst possible driving conditions hit the area, with freezing rain changing to snow.  To our north came the heavy snow, and reason to be grateful the hazardous chemicals tend to travel by train.

Racine, Dodge and Ozaukee counties experienced severe freeway closures Thursday after crashes led to car pileups and landed semi-trucks in ditches.

Three people were hurt with non-life-threatening injuries after 30 vehicles including six semi-trucks were in a series of crashes at 1:55 p.m. near Kewaskum in Dodge County. I-41 southbound remains closed at Wis. 28 while crews are still clearing the crash. Washington County Sheriff’s Office told TMJ4 that heavy snow and winter conditions also led to several multi-vehicle crashes just north of HWY D in the town of Wayne.

Two vehicles crashed near the median on I-41 near Raymond in Racine County at 12:40 p.m. Two semis jackknifed after one could not slow to a stop approaching the crash and a third semi hit a box truck and a van. Three people were injured but are all expected to make full recoveries. Roads were opened by 2:45 p.m. TMJ4 reported that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation believes that people driving too fast for the wet conditions led to the crashes.

"Too fast for conditions" is more commonly a thing earlier in the winter, before people catch on, although I suspect there's a false confidence people with all-wheel drive get that being able to get moving and keep moving more easily also means being able to stop more easily.  Sorry, no.  All vehicles have all wheel braking.

The concatenation of failures that is at hand, though, is the circumstances leading to the East Palestine, Ohio, train wreck.

Railway Age learned that the derailment probably occurred due to a combination of factors and unfortunate timing. The train passed a wayside hotbox detector that reported zero defects. Shortly after that, a wheel bearing started to overheat, which in turn caused an axle to severely overheat as the bearing got hotter. This eventually resulted in an axle failure that, unfortunately, occurred within a few moments after the train had passed by a second hotbox detector that flagged the problem, alerting the crew. The engineer immediately applied the brakes, but the axle had already failed, and the train derailed.

On Feb. 14, NTSB issued an update confirming what Railway Age learned:

“On Feb. 3, at approximately 8:54 p.m., local time, eastbound Norfolk Southern Railway, general merchandise freight train 32N, derailed on main track 1 in East Palestine, Ohio. As a result of the derailment, 38 rail cars derailed and a fire ensued that damaged an additional 12 cars. There were 20 total hazardous material cars in the train consist—11 of which derailed."

The maintenance of the pressure relief valves on the tank cars might also be subject to further review. "As to the hazmat in the derailed cars, on Feb. 5, NS reported that ‘during the monitoring of the derailed cars, it was found that the pressure relief devices on some of the cars had stopped working. If not addressed, it could result in a catastrophic failure of the cars."  The Association of American Railroads, a trade association, has noted that most of the cargo, including the hazardous cargo, safely gets to where it's consigned.

Overall, railroads are safe. While 99.9% of all hazmat shipments reach their destination without impact, the less-than 0.1% have the potential to dramatically impact the communities served. Railroads take this responsibility seriously and have no higher priority than safety.

The industry’s first goal is to prevent an accident before it can happen. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave rail its highest grade in its infrastructure report card in part because of the annual $20 billion in private investments in maintaining and improving network.

The association statement also expresses exasperation with too-quick a rush to judgement.

As the NTSB’s work continues, any speculation as to the cause or contributing factors that lead to the incident is just that—speculation—and undermines the overall fact-gathering process. Additionally, immediate pushes for legislative or regulatory action absent of NTSB results and in response to the accident is premature at best—and opportunistic at worst. Interested parties should consider the available facts on rail safety (see below), immediate ‘solutions’ to enhance safety permeating some coverage and the potential motivations of the loudest voices alleging a fundamental failure in U.S. railroading.

Yes, and sometimes, that opportunistic commentary is flat out wrong.

While the train was two miles long and heavy, and carried a dizzying array of hazardous chemicals, its braking system relied on technology dating back to the Civil War. This brake mechanism functions like bumper cars, when the engine in front slows, the car behind it bumps into it and it brakes, and so on down the line. A much more modern and effective braking system, known as ECP, for “Electronically Controlled Pneumatic brakes,” is already in use.

Sorry, not quite.  It's true that automatic air braking propagates from car to car, which leads to slack action as the brakes apply on the cars in front, but it's not the slack action that activates the brakes.  It's also true that electronically assisted air brakes have been a thing on fixed consist trains for years; and if the axle on the car in question had failed as the engineer was responding to the talking defect detector, whether the braking action propagated back to the failed car or acted on the failed car promptly would have made no difference.  We'll leave for the mechanical and electrical engineers the challenge of ensuring performance of the braking system when there are more components that can go wrong.  Old case in point: one of the Depression-era Union Pacific streamliners had an early version of this electric control, and the electrical part failed just as the engineer was braking for a diverging move at West Chicago. Fortunately, the fixed consist helped keep that train on the tracks, although the train took that switch at twice the authorized speed.

The commentary, however, raises a point that observers of the railroad business who are not out socialists are also making.  "In addition to blocking safety rules, Norfolk Southern and other rail giants have been slashing costs to increase profits."  Freight Waves's Rachel Premack notes, "There used to be something called 'maintenance.'"  That might have been slighted, in the form of skill positions being abolished on the old Crestline Sub.

Specialized signalmen called “electronic leaders” specialize in maintaining devices like hot-box detectors.

As recently as three years ago, Norfolk Southern employed five electronic leaders in the area of its rail network that includes East Palestine. Today, it employs zero, according to Christopher Hand, director of research at the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen.

Hand said electronic leaders know hot-box detectors “inside out.” But the position, which typically requires years of experience and higher pay, has become less common at railroads across the country. Electronic leaders also taught newer signalmen how to operate devices like the hot-box detectors.

After that position was eliminated in Norfolk Southern’s Division B, Hand said its responsibilities were likely transferred to a signal maintainer. Their main role is to keep up with government-mandated tests of equipment — and hot-box detectors aren’t under federal regulations.

“Once they eliminated that position, it fell to the signal maintainers who had no knowledge, no training or very, very little training on these hot-box detectors,” Hand said in an interview with FreightWaves.

Across the rail industry, Hand said most signalmen are exclusively spending time on these government-mandated tests, rather than doing preventive maintenance, like cleaning and greasing.

We'll wait for any official reports before speculating on whether the train might have received a false "no defects" report (a type II error, if you will) at that first detector.

Meanwhile, our transportation secretary has another "What, me worry?" moment. "While this horrible situation has gotten a particularly high amount of attention, there are roughly 1,000 cases a year of a train derailing."  Put that one in the file with Hillary Clinton's “I can’t worry about every undercapitalized business,”  which was her dismissal of the effects of new socialized-medicine-adjacent business taxes on business formation.  The secretary of transportation is right about the incidence of derailments, and wrong on the substance.  You include in that count the occasional East Palestine along with the oopsie where a freight car puts an axle, or perhaps one bogie, on the ground, and the switch crew might have enough blocking on the locomotive to put things right before the management notices.

A USA Today analysis provides elaboration, as well as cause for concern.

Technological improvements to the railcars crisscrossing the nation's tracks to ensure better crashworthiness and temperature regulation, retiring old cars, and a decline in crude oil transport since their peak in 2015 have made railcars less likely to leak or spill hazardous materials, experts told USA TODAY.

Yet when wrecks do occur, they may serve as difficult reality checks for the many Americans who live near railroad tracks moving massive amounts of freight, including potentially toxic chemicals, each year.

Yes. When a bad one happens, it might be on the relevant public officials to act like they care.  If there's a bad head-on collision at a Sterling, Ohio interlocking that is long abandoned, or a rail failure that leads to the near-destruction of Dunreith, Indiana, or a car loaded with ordnance bound for Vietnam catches fire in the Roseville, California yards, "difficult reality check" is an understatement.

The cause for concern?

USA TODAY found that although catastrophic events involving trains and chemicals may be uncommon, hazmat cargo violations caught during inspections of rail shippers and operators appear to be climbing. Over the last five years, federal inspectors have flagged 36% more hazmat violations compared with the five years prior – and fines for those are up 16%.

One reason for the increase, however, may simply be improved accountability by agency inspectors.

What the management, or the government, measures, it gets more of.