WINTHROP, Minn. – Jim Brandt’s steel-toed boots treaded nimbly across the railroad ties as he scanned the track around him for loose bolts, unfastened clips, gaping switches — anything that could prove dangerous for massive trains. Everything looked good, he confirmed w [...]
Samantha Alvelo has thanked God for saving her young life after a train rolled over her three decades ago in Havelock, but she has always wanted to thank Joe. She finally got that chance on Friday night. Alvelo completed a decade-long search for the railroad worker she credit [...]
The Federal Railroad Administration issued a final rule requiring certain major railroads to develop critical incident stress plans that provide for appropriate support services to be offered to their employees who are affected by a “critical incident.” Critical incidents ref [...]
Members planning to attend the 2014 SMART Transportation Division Convention, June 30-July 2 in San Diego, as a guest are asked to please complete the guest registration form and return it to the Transportation Division office in North Olmsted, Ohio. It is requested that all [...]
Trainmen and engineers represented by the SMART Transportation Division and employed by Chicago Rail Link have ratified a new six-year agreement, with 95 percent of the affected employees voting in favor of the deal. The agreement provides for annual wage increases with full [...]
Former Burlington Northern Railroad Associate General Chairperson Harold “Jack” Carstens, 94, died March 19. Carstens, a member of SMART Transportation Local 1637 at Wishram, Wash., was the conductors’ griever for General Committee of Adjustment GO 386. Born Dec. 27, 1919, in [...]
CHICAGO – The operator of a Chicago commuter train that crashed at O’Hare International Airport acknowledged she dozed off before the accident and had also done so last month when she overshot a station platform, a federal investigator said Wednesday (March 26). Before [...]
Last month in Olympia, Wash., passengers on a city bus witnessed their driver being brutally beaten in an attack that was caught on video for the world to see. The footage is alarming and sickening. It was not, unfortunately, uncommon. From sexual and physical assaults to ver [...]
The Federal Railroad Administration is proposing to improve the integrity of passenger train exterior side door safety systems and promote passenger train safety overall through new safety standards relating to the safe operation and use of passenger train exterior side doors [...]
CHICAGO – An emergency track-side braking system activated but failed to stop a Chicago commuter train from jumping the tracks and barreling to the top of an escalator at O’Hare International Airport, a federal investigator said Tuesday. The events that led to Monday [...]
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