THERE ARE NO LONGER ENOUGH EYES ON THE TRAINS.

That East Palestine, Ohio train derailment has the political observers riled up.  Victory Girl Kim Hirsch weighs in.  "Train Derailment and the Pointing of Fingers."  It's gotten so that right-populist webloggers and Trotskyist socialists are sounding the same themes.

Perhaps Norfolk Southern feared that they might have to answer concerns that some of their employees knew the train was dangerous. They feared that the company’s implementation of “Precision Scheduled Railroading,” or PSR, a management philosophy which uses technology to improve efficiency — and profits — would lead to accidents like the event in East Palestine.

Or maybe they feared having to answer why doorbell camera videos showed that the axle on one of the cars was on fire some 20 miles before the derailment. “Hot box detectors” which are placed at intervals are supposed to alert personnel. Yet the alert came too late, and the fiery axle led to the derailment.

Precision Scheduled Railroading is a false economy, leading to tired and overstressed crews. The festering labor relations that almost led to a railroaders' strike last fall might also be leading to the remaining railroaders cutting corners.  Part of Precision Scheduled Railroading might be giving due regard to the possibility of false positives with those talking defect detectors.  They can happen.  But for a derailment of East Palestine proportions to take place, both the train crew and the dispatcher on duty must concur that the defect recorded is a false positive.  Note, dear reader, that a talking defect detector broadcasts a radio message which must be acknowledged by the engineer, and the dispatcher also hears it.  I don't know how far back in the train the defect was, but if the culture of possible false positives is also a culture of cutting corners, it's a good bet that any defect at axle count of 300 or higher is more likely to be thought of as a false positive.  Alternatively, the thinking might be with a train that long to get it to someplace where it's easier to service the defect.

Either way, the absence of responsible eyes contributes to the wreck.  Years ago, the passage of a train was shepherded by station agents, if the station was open; by interlocking tower operators required to go trackside and look the train over (thus those fixed train-order hoops in preference to the operator standing at trackside to physically deliver the orders); and by crossing tenders.  Yes, that's a lot of expensive labor prone to sickness, to nodding off at night, to showing up buzzed, and a lot of the train movements and crossing protection can be handled automatically.  On the other hand, when an Erie freight train crew thought they saw sticking brakes, which the crew corrected by applying and then releasing the brakes, ending the sparks they saw back in the train, there was a crossing tender whose crossing planks were torn up by that train: the dispatcher set a train order signal under his control to "stop and call in," appraised the crew of those facts, and the crew, including the head brakeman and the conductor in his caboose, inspected the train ... to find a fractured wheel jammed into a sliding position that could have caught on a switch frog and piled up a few cars.  (Trains, November 1980, pages 58-59).

It might be worth the risk to get fewer, longer trains over the road with fewer eyes on the movement, but doing so degrades the margin of error.