Norfolk Southern allows a monitoring team to instruct crews to ignore alerts from train track sensors designed to flag potential mechanical problems.
ProPublica learned of the policy after reviewing the rules of the company, which is engulfed in controversy after one of its trains derailed this month, releasing toxic flammable gas over East Palestine, Ohio.
The policy applies specifically to the company’s Wayside Detector Help Desk, which monitors data from the track-side sensors. Workers on the desk can tell crews to disregard an alert when “information is available confirming it is safe to proceed” and to continue no faster than 30 miles per hour to the next track-side sensor, which is often miles away. The company’s rulebook did not specify what such information might be, and company officials did not respond to questions about the policy.
Other than this newspaper the Main Stream Media is ignoring this story. It’s mostly non traditional media covering this story. Perhaps the Inquirer didn’t get the memo or phone call advising it to not cover this story.
You may remember politicians entered this labor negotiation to push through a settlement. A good pay increase but ignoring labor’s attendance complaints regarding sick leave & medical appointments to prevent a national economic impact due to a strike.
Likely the basis for worker’s complaints lies in the fact that railroad management have cut the number of employees by nearly a third over the past 6 years.
I suppose some middle manager might pay a price. But we all know that the middle manager was ordered from on high to ignore warnings.