Execs got money, in part for 'record'
railroad train length
WEWS-TV (Cleveland),
by
Carrie Cochran
&
Mark Greenblatt
Original Article
Posted By: OhioNick,
4/11/2024 8:55:27 PM
When Norfolk Southern’s derailed train spewed toxic chemicals into East Palestine, Ohio, Scripps News was the first news organization to uncover how company executives received millions in cash for actions that compromised safety, including making its trains longer and heavier. Weighing 18,000 tons, the derailed train was nearly two miles long.
Industry insiders, Congressional members, and former Federal Railroad Administration leaders expressed shock at what Scripps News uncovered:
-Norfolk Southern gave large cash payouts to executives for achieving “record performance for train length and weight.”
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Reply 1 - Posted by:
Bur Oak 4/11/2024 9:11:02 PM (No. 1697615)
I have my doubts that longer trains mean more derailments.
8 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
WV.Hillbilly 4/11/2024 10:17:08 PM (No. 1697633)
Their job is to move freight. Of course they're going to run as long and heavy of a train that they can. Doesn't make it anymore dangerous.
7 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
KTWO 4/11/2024 10:17:51 PM (No. 1697634)
Like#1 I don't see length as a derailment cause.
But if the longer trains weigh more that has to increase the stress on couplings somewhere. And especially during accelerations and slowing.
So maybe one sort of failure led to another.
9 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
DVC 4/12/2024 12:59:12 AM (No. 1697678)
I live near some RR tracks and freight trains pass by many times a day. Occasionally, I have counted the cars on the typical freight train. Around here in KC area, typically they run right at about 105-115 cars, and one online source says that this is about 6500 feet or about 1 1/4 miles.
So, these "nearly two miles long" trains are significantly longer than the ones I have, randomly, and for no serious purpose, counted here.
4 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
plomke 4/12/2024 5:37:11 AM (No. 1697716)
Distributed Power.
Engines placed within the length of the train.
Two or more up front and at the rear,while single engines are placed between cars in the middle.
This reduces brake application time and coupling forces.
All engines operate from one control unit.
Reduced fuel consumption too.
Makes for long waits at crossings though...
6 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Kafka2 4/12/2024 5:48:34 AM (No. 1697719)
When a train goes around a curve, side forces on the cars in the curve act to tip to the inside of the curve. The engine pulls in the direction the engine is going. The cars on the rear of the train produce drag toward the rear of the train. A two mile long train will produce an incredible amount of tip over force. It is amazing that more trains have not derailed because of this practice.
6 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 4/12/2024 6:33:54 AM (No. 1697740)
Corporate Boards cook up ever more creative ways to establish their "Executive Bonus Program." At the corporation I worked they had a executive compensation plan tied to the number and depth of "employee programs" rolled out during a fiscal year. One of those "programs" we all had to go through was "SixSigma" certifications. A gaggle of slick-talking "Shamans of SixSigma" education came to the Executive Staff and schmoozed them into jumping on the "SixSigma Train" and paid them hue money for their training materials and oversight. Our Executives got massive bonuses, while the already overloaded employees got strangled with mostly useless training they'd never use, or, if it was used, it was on mostly trivial things that ran counter-productive to efficient operations. Lost productivity had to have counted in the billions for that crap, After a couple of years, our global "Six Sigma" infrastructure was obliterated from corporate memory, and replaced with the "Next Big Thing" to accomplish the CEO bonus.
6 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Paperpuncher 4/12/2024 8:49:27 AM (No. 1697824)
I have had a few dealings with Norfolk Southern in the past. They are arrogant and a pain in the xxx to deal with. They want to put all the liability for their mistakes on others. The other railroad companies are easier to deal with and probably have stiffer safety standards.
2 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
bamboozle 4/12/2024 10:38:32 AM (No. 1697896)
The Ohio wreck appeared to have been caused by failure of an overheated bearing, didn't it?
2 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
DVC 4/12/2024 11:47:08 AM (No. 1697963)
The RRs pai one crew to run a train. Five cars or 500 cars....same exact labor costs. THAT is why they push for longer trains.
And # 5 is correct, they have been putting drone engines in the middle and back end of trains for some time now. One crew controls all the engines, sometimes 5 or more here in the flat country in the midwest.
0 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 4/12/2024 12:49:56 PM (No. 1697999)
Re #7. I worked in the aerospace weapons industry for many decades. We built, perhaps 100-200 EVER of a given device, often built at a rate of 10-20 pear year.
"Six Sigma" means six standard deviations from the normal (mean, or average) point on a bell curve distribution of quality. One sigma either side of the mean will include 68% of the samples, usually a production lot. Two sigma either side of the mean will include 95% of the sample. And three sigma, three standard deviations from the mean, will include 99.7% of all the samples. There will be still a tiny bit of samples on the right and left, 0.15% per side. So, going out SIX sigma, is supposed to imply 3.4 defects per 1,00,000 parts produced.
Take a brief look at this chart, it may help.
https://s2.studylib.net/store/data/010831019_1-83aec229b01fe9191221ed676db6a01b.png
The intent is for an assembly line producing hundreds of thousands or millions of identical products (bolts, pop cans, fuel injectors....what ever) you can pull samples and test them, and plot this on a "limits" graph.
You can keep your production, bases on samples pulled and measured, within boundaries and "never build a bad part". Great idea for a huge production line.
It had NO RELATIONSHIP with out low production system making 10-20 per year.
Two CRITICAL points.
1) This is based on "large sample statistics" where the sample size must be at least 100, but 1,000 is better, to be valid. The math is INVALID for small sample sizes.
2) in a business where you manufacture a TOTAL of 10 units or 20 per year, you cannot "pull a sample of 1,00", let along 1,000.
You are better off just inspecting 100% of your production....all 10 of them.
For low production factories like ours Six Sigma was a literal statistical joke. I pointed these things out to several of my 'instructors', fellow engineers, and they privately agreed that, while it made sense for a auto parts maker, it was not applicable to our factory. And then they said. "Top management at the home office has bought into this and ordered it applied to ALL divisions. Nothing will change that, and resisting will just get you bad evaluations. Just go with the flow."
Our main company produced many consumer electronic products, and some automotive products, we were a separate aerospace division, bought up in a merger deal and a money maker. The idiots at HQ only knew we were "that classified stuff" and profitable, and ordered us to waste a LOT of time and money on this nonsense which is mathematically invalid for our low production levels.
Stupid is the main thing of top corporate management these days in the USA. Glad I retired a decade ago.
0 people like this.
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Here's some troubling details about the Norfolk Southern train crash in East Palestine, Ohio.