The railroad industry has a handful of trade magazines that do a very thorough job of covering what is going on in the world of government regulations as well as technology and industry trends. One thing that these magazines do with regularity is to put out lists they bill as “Railroader of the Year” or “Rising Stars” in railroading.

The only problem with this practice is that there is a disconnect between their concept of “railroaders” and the reality we all live in on the ballast. We all are both entertained and sickened when CEOs are handed the title of Railroader of the Year, and those 40 people under 40 featured in Rising Star lists often collectively have thrown zero switches and have set out the same number of bad-ordered cars.

As an example, in October, with a stock photo across the top, Railway Age magazine published its announcement of its “2023 Women in Rail Honorees.” Looking at this collection of carrier departmental vice presidents and other executives, it made us think that maybe the SMART Transportation Division should help these magazines out going forward. We know they like to put these lists together and regularly overlook the accomplishments of very worthy and more authentic candidates. So we are asking for your help.

SMART-TD Wyoming State Legislative Director April Ford

SMART is going to put together our own list of candidates for “Women in Rail” honorees, and we will be more than happy to send them in a press release in the future to the trade magazines so that they can see what kind of women leaders this industry has — the ones who make the railroads run and work outside of the board rooms and air-conditioned offices.

For example, in Wyoming, SMART-TD’s own State Legislative Director April Ford is our top official there. She addresses our members’ safety issues as well as being rail labor’s eyes, ears and spokesperson in Wyoming. Sister Ford did not only come from the craft, but she is also still in the craft. The job of Wyoming SLD is not full time. Ford can be found pulling a coal train out of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin or in Cheyenne at the Capitol giving testimony to the transportation committee on any given day.

A second example of exemplary women in railroading and in SMART-TD, is Jessica Martin. Conductor Martin has been a member for 10 years out of Local 594 in Mineola, Texas.

Engineer Lisa Watson-Knuckols, left, and Jessica Martin, both of Local 594 in Mineola, Texas, pose together for a photo.

She currently serves 594 as their legislative representative (LR) and has been in leadership positions in her local since 2016, in addition to working for Union Pacific. When Sister Martin isn’t switching boxcars and hauling freight, she is looking out for the best interest of members. As an active LR, her head is on a swivel, looking to improve safety conditions for her crew base as well as keeping her eye on local, state and federal policy makers.

In 2022, Martin’s first year as LR for 594, she went above and beyond the call of duty as a local officer. While the corporate executives of UP (where she works) were in Washington D.C. formally pitching their ground-based expeditor/conductor plan in the Federal Railroad Administration’s two-person crew hearings, Martin was hauling freight and providing for her son in Texas while the UP executives were trying to sell the livelihoods of her SMART-TD brothers and sisters down the river.

Though she didn’t have the luxury of being there to defend her people in person, Martin testified remotely at the FRA hearing and provided a compelling demonstration of the value of having two certified professional railroaders in the cab of a locomotive. Her testimony was well received and went a long way to emphasizing the important job each and every conductor in this country performs.

SMART TD GO-953 General Chairperson Luke Edington, Nebraska State Legislative Director Andy Foust and Local 200 Chairperson Manda Snide have their picture taken at the Midwest Nebraska Central Labor Council's Solidarity Day.
From left, SMART TD GO-953 General Chairperson Luke Edington, Nebraska State Legislative Director Andy Foust and Local 200 Chairperson Manda Snide have their picture taken at the Midwest Nebraska Central Labor Council’s Solidarity Day.

Yet another example that comes straight out of SMART-TD’s recent news articles is Amanda Snide out of Local 200 in North Platte, Nebraska. Manda also is a full-time conductor running the rails for Union Pacific. She is not only local chairperson and legislative rep for a very large and active local out of UP’s largest yard, but she is also the assistant state legislative director for the state of Nebraska. Just recently, her ingenuity is being credited with preserving the railroad careers of dozens of Mechanical employees recently cut by UP.

These women are shining examples of who should be recognized as true Women in Rail honorees.

We are asking all of you to let us know whom you would nominate for this list. Please email dbanks@smart-union.org with names of the women you would like to see nominated. We would like for you to include a short description of the SMART-TD sister you are nominating for this list. Let us know why she would be a good representative of SMART-TD and REAL railroaders in general.

SMART-TD is going to put together an in-house version of the trade publications’ list, publish it and then send it to all the trade magazines in a press release in time for next year’s nominations. It is very likely that our list of “Women Actually in Rail” honorees will only be published on our website and print publications, but we are tired of our members not getting the acknowledgement they deserve for the jobs they do.

The following letter was submitted by the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, of which the SMART Transportation Division and Mechanical Division are members, on behalf of SMART and a number of other labor unions to President Joe Biden earlier this week.


November 12, 2023

Dear President Biden:

On behalf of the undersigned national rail labor unions, we write to unanimously recommend and support Johnathan D. Bragg to be re-nominated to serve as the Labor Member on the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB). He has demonstrated excellent service on the Board for the last four years since his confirmation in early 2019, and we request that he be nominated for another term to serve on the Board.

John Bragg, labor’s member on the Railroad Retirement Board, addresses the Transportation Division session at the SMART Leadership Conference on July 31, 2023.

As you know, employees in the railroad industry are covered under a separate retirement system which is administered by the RRB. This unique system, funded solely by the industry and its employees, provides retirement, unemployment, disability and survivor benefits for millions of rail workers. These benefits and services are essential to the lives of all employees and their families. To help ensure that the system protects the interest of rail workers, Section 7(A) of the Railroad Retirement Act of 1974 dictates that the President must nominate one candidate to the Board based on the “recommendations made by representatives of the employees.” We strongly endorse Johnathan D. Bragg to continue serving as the Labor member for the RRB.

Mr. Bragg has shown great leadership on the Board and successfully represented and advocated for rail workers during one of the most trying times in the rail industry. Like many industries, the COVID-19 pandemic caused many hardships for rail workers, including layoffs, illness and even unfortunately death. Congress included provisions in the COVID-19 relief packages to provide temporary additional benefits, such as enhanced rail worker unemployment benefits, that were administered through the RRB; Mr. Bragg and his staff were instrumental in successfully rolling out and implementing those benefits in record time. During his tenure, Mr. Bragg has also advocated for and provided oversight of the long overdue modernization of the RRB’s IT systems that will bring RRB’s 1960’s IT systems into the 21st century and facilitate much-needed improvements, such as allowing workers to file benefit claims online.

In addition to his leadership and service on the Board, Mr. Bragg hails from a long line of railroaders in his family. He began his own rail career 23 years ago as a freight conductor, and later a signalman, and knows the rail worker’s perspective firsthand. As a dedicated rail worker and union member, he climbed the union leadership ranks as a Local Chairman, Grand Lodge Representative, and National Vice-President. He also represented the BRS as a permanent Board Member of the National Railroad Adjustment Board. Mr. Bragg’s long and accomplished career has allowed him to excel in his current role. If granted a second term as the RRB’s Labor Member, Mr. Bragg will continue bringing an invaluable level of experience, knowledge, and understanding of the needs of rail workers, retirees, and their families who rely on the system.

For these reasons, we strongly recommend you re-nominate Johnathan D. Bragg to serve as the Labor member of the RRB as you work to ensure the agency’s full board member capacity.

Sincerely,

American Train Dispatchers Association (ATDA)
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET)-IBT
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED)-IBT
Brotherhood of Railway Carmen (BRC)
Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS)
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM)
International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers, and Helpers (IBB)
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers–Mechanical Division (SMART-MD)
International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers–Transportation Division (SMART-TD)
National Conference of Firemen & Oilers, SEIU (NCFO)
Transportation Communications International Union (TCU)
Transport Workers Union of America (TWU)

The SMART Transportation Division has been asking for help and advocacy from our members this week to reach out to Congress and let them know that it is not OK to gut the federal spending for Amtrak. Late Thursday, it appears that your voices have been heard loud and clear and have had an impact!

The House of Representatives prepared its budget bill for the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD), and it called for an apocalyptic cut to AMTRAK’s budget. The version of the budget that came out of committee and was slated for a floor vote Nov. 2 featured a 64% cut to Amtrak.

This proposed funding cut would have been devastating to thousands of SMART-TD members who work in passenger rail. Fallout from the job cuts that would inevitably come from this short-sighted effort to slash and burn Amtrak would have also impacted the solvency of the Railroad Retirement Board, which would be a significant problem for everyone in railroad industry on both the freight and passenger sides.

Through the hard work of rail labor and the advocacy of our members and passenger railroad advocates reaching out to their members of Congress, the vote on this budget bill has been halted this week. Several Republican reps have expressed that this “halting” of the vote is directly related to concerns raised about Amtrak cuts.

In short, YOUR VOICE IS BEING HEARD!

While this is very welcome news, the threat is not over. This THUD budget bill is scheduled to come back to the House floor next week. We need all our members to contact their congressional representatives and express in no uncertain terms that cuts to Amtrak funding and subsequently the Railroad Retirement Board is not a responsible way to patch the holes in this nation’s budget.

Please follow this link to SMART-TD’s Legislative Action Center to send a pre-written message today! Together we can protect our brothers and sisters and maintain the pension plan that we all worked for!

Since 1998, trains coming across the Mexican border to the United States in Laredo, Texas, have been run by non-FRA-certified foreign national crews from Mexico. These foreign crews have been taking trains into Port Laredo, where they receive an initial Class I inspection and brake test on U.S. soil.  

This practice was established back in 1998 when Union Pacific requested a variance from FRA. The variance was reconfirmed in 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018 and was reapplied for in 2022.  

Multiple times this variance has come up for renewal, and the question has been asked of FRA whether it would be permissible for crews over whom they have no oversight to take trains 10 miles deep into our country without an inspection and without a thorough brake test. For years, the agency’s leaders answered, “Yes — If the railroad asked for it, it must be OK.”  

In 2023, UP put in its standard request seeking a rubber stamp to continue the practice, using the same tired justifications the carrier has used for a quarter-century. All unions know crews are paid by the mile, and UP had somehow found a way to trade the border security of this country and the safety of our rails so the carrier wouldn’t have to pay U.S.-based crews for those 10 extra miles a day.  

But unlike the four prior requests, SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson, National Legislative Director Greg Hynes, Alternate National Legislative Director Jared Cassity and Kamron Saunders, Texas’s state legislative director, officially requested FRA put an end to this practice. Along with our allies in the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department and other rail labor organizations, SMART-TD submitted strong public comments that pointed out many holes in the logic.  

This week, FRA released its ruling on UP’s variance request. The carrier will continue to be allowed to perform Class I brake tests 10 miles into the U.S. in its yard in Port Laredo, Texas.  

HOWEVER, in a clear victory for labor, a new rule was added.  

13. All trains crossing the international bridge at Laredo and destined for UP’s Port Laredo Yard must be operated from the bridge to that Yard by a properly qualified and certified UP locomotive engineer and conductor.” 

Local Chairperson Eddy Castaneda of Local 1670 (Laredo, Texas) is also vice general chairperson of the San Antonio Hub and highly excited about the news out of the FRA this week.  

“It has been a long fight to get this work back, and this is a big win for us. It wouldn’t have been possible without everyone working together,” he said. “All the local chairs in the Laredo Hub, Scott Chelette, our general committee chair, and Kamron Saunders, our Texas state legislative director, as well as the International, have been relentless — working on congressmen and the FRA to get these jobs back in the hands of FRA-certified crews. 

“We are grateful for those of us here in Laredo, but we have a long fight still to go. There are many other border crossings and a lot more crew bases we need to fight for.” 

President Ferguson was in Texas at a Houston rail labor rally shortly after the FRA released its ruling. When he got word of this win for common sense and public safety, he had this to say: 

“The carriers involved gave our work to non-FRA-certified foreign national crews a long time ago to save a buck for their shareholders. Today, our members got back some work that is rightfully ours and this country is safer and better off for it. I’m proud of the work SMART-TD has done to make this happen. This ruling helps shore up a national security concern. This is a good day for our members and this country’s safety.” 

Alternate National Legislative Director Jared Cassity said FRA’s action is a step forward to normalizing cross-border regulation. 

“It is great that we got this work back for our crews and were able to add security to our borders, but the big-picture win is that FRA listened to SMART-TD,” Cassity said. “They listened to the views of Kamron Saunders and didn’t blindly swallow whatever the railroads tried to sell them. This FRA isn’t afraid to deny the railroad what they want if it isn’t the safest policy for our workers and the country itself.”  

For more information, read FRA’s ruling embedded below. 

In 2022, Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey signed into law Senate Joint Resolution 86, declaring October 15 “Railroad Workers Day” throughout the Garden State.  

This Sunday, New Jersey will be recognizing Railroad Workers Day for the second time. As Gov. Murphy said about railroaders last fall when he was signing the bill into law, “Their courage, as well as their role as the backbone of our state’s expanding transportation network, must not be overlooked. On October 15th — and every day — we honor the contributions of our workers not just as employees, but as New Jerseyans committed to promoting safety, efficiency, and economic activity in our local communities.”  

SMART-TD New Jersey State Legislative Director Ron Sabol

New Jersey’s recognition of our members is a product of SMART-TD’s State Legislative Director Ron Sabol, N.J. State Sen. Patrick J. Diegnan (D), and N.J. Assemblyman Daniel Benson (D). Diegnan was the primary sponsor for the bill.  

Both Sen. Diegnan and Assemblyman Benson serve on the Transportation Committee in the Legislature. In this role, both have been exposed to the realities of New Jersey’s rail crews. This insight led them to push for the creation of Railroad Workers Day.    

SMART-TD is happy to celebrate Railroad Workers Day with our brothers and sisters. We hope that all of you stay safe out there on the ballast, and continue making our issues top of mind for the legislators in Trenton! 

As kids, the term “Hot Wheels” brought to mind good times playing with tricked-out toy cars and letting your imagination take it from there. As railroad professionals, this term goes from warm and fuzzy childhood memories to the gut-churning stuff of nightmares.

Railroaders all know that overheated bearings and wheels are one of the fastest ways to have a bad day or to make the news for the wrong reasons. In railroad training centers for all the major railroads, we are taught about the dangers of hot wheels/journals/bearings, but the silver lining on this issue is that the people managing the railroad have already figured it all out. We were all issued a temperature indicator stick (Tempilstik) and told that this very special crayon, combined with the railroad’s foolproof system of wayside defect detectors, would be adequate for us to make it through our 30-year careers and retire without having to worry about literally running the wheels off our train.

Turns out that this well-crafted illusion of security the railroads gave us on this topic was just as true as most of the other vetted-by-legal-counsel nonsense they fed us.

As most conductors find out the first time they get an alert from a hot box detector and the dispatcher tells them to ignore it, DDs aren’t regulated. They are in place for the convenience of the carrier and as a risk diversion for their bottom line. They are part of the safety equation but not tied to any laws or federal regulations. We all know that when you hit a hot box alert on an empty grain train, you’re going for a walk to investigate, but when you hit the same detector the next day on a container train with UPS, FedEx or Amazon shipments on board, it’s “nothing to be concerned about.”

The same smoke-and-mirrors treatment surrounds the security we have always gotten from our tempilstik. The logic behind this tool has always been that if doesn’t melt, you don’t have an issue, and it’s time to haul freight. Unfortunately, there is one big problem with this premise: It came from the railroad carriers.

When the time comes to walk your train and check for a hot wheel or journal, we all go through the same steps. We do the math, figuring out what car the axle in question is on. We mark our consist paperwork up to reflect where the 20 axles ahead and behind start and end. We grab our vest, red tag, and a marker, and then we dig through our grip to pull out the all-important tempilstik. Then we get off the engine to do our jobs.

Upon getting back to the axle in question, if the wax doesn’t melt, we report our “findings” to the engineer and dispatcher. Then we move on with our day, reassured that there is nothing wrong with our train. Maybe it’s because we are too pissed in that moment thinking about the fact this misdiagnosis from the DD is going to make us late getting home or that the pizza place next to the away-from-home hotel will be closed when the time comes to mark off, but we never take the time to ask ourselves if the tool your company gave you was adequate to test that wheel’s health for starters.

In June at the NTSB’s investigative hearing in East Palestine, Ohio, one of the experts on the panel made a reference to the fact that the integrity of rail bearings begins to break down at the temperature of 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Very soon after that statement was made, the representative on the panel from the Association of American Railroads (AAR) made the statement that this statistic is the reason that all railroad crews are equipped with a tempilstik specifically designed to melt at 169 degrees Fahrenheit.

SMART-TD was represented in that hearing, and there were certified conductors/SMART-TD members in attendance who heard this comment. Within a few minutes, there were cell phone images coming into these members from their coworkers of tempilstiks that were clearly labeled as being calibrated to melt at a temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

This 31-degree discrepancy means that obviously the AAR — the lobbying arm of the railroad companies — was less than accurate about their own safety apparatus in a federal hearing in which an oath was taken to represent the truth. That is not hard for any of us to believe. However, the larger miscarriage of justice and the larger concern to the safety of our train crews and communities like East Palestine that are dotted by rail lines all over the country is this:

The AAR’s acknowledgment and acceptance of this expert’s fact that 170 degrees Fahrenheit is the absolute threshold of when the mechanics of a rail wheel and its components are at risk of breaking down is utterly damning.

If this 170-degree threshold was a known fact to the railroads, how in good conscience have they been sending workers out to investigate the bearings armed with equipment they knew wasn’t physically capable of identifying the problem unless it was already 30 degrees past the point of no return?

SMART-TD has yet to receive an answer to this question. What is important is that this practice stops. In the two months since these comments were made at the NTSB hearing, it has come to SMART’s attention that Class I carriers have begun issuing new tempilstiks certified to melt at 169 degrees.

Some of the same members who helped us in the heat of the moment during the hearing have followed up by sending us evidence that they have been issued the new tempilstiks, and SMART-TD very much appreciates that.

On its face, this seems like a victory for railroaders and the safety of the communities our trains run through. Obviously, an apparatus designed to melt at 169 degrees is significantly better for all involved than the 200-degree version that we have had at our disposal. But let’s not downplay the fact that these rail carriers have acknowledged the scientific significance of 170 degrees, and that they knew they couldn’t hide behind issuing us safety apparatuses that were higher than the level their representative spoke to on the record in a public forum. The solution they came up with still is very questionable.

By the time a train stops in response to a hot wheel detector, and the conductor goes through all steps already mentioned, then walks back to the axle in question – maybe one mile, maybe two — what are the odds that a wheel that was 170 degrees at the time it passed the detector hasn’t cooled off to being below 169 degrees by the time that tempilstik is applied to it? They aren’t very good. In no way does it make sense that the railroad would invest in equipment that is rated to measure if the wheel is one barely significant degree away from the threshold of causing potential disasters.

If these railroad companies were at all serious about avoiding mainline derailments, they would invest in tempilstiks that can identify a problematic wheel substantially before the point of critical failure. SMART-TD doesn’t have any certified material engineers on staff capable of telling us what that number would be, but we do have a lot of collective years of experience as conductors and engineers and we know that, especially in cold weather, wheels that were at 170 when they passed a detector will be far cooler than 169 by the time we walk back. This is especially true in today’s era with trains over three miles long. It may very well take over an hour before a problematic wheel can be found and tested.

SMART-TD wants all its rail members to know that we aren’t satisfied with these 169-degree tempilstiks as a permanent solution. There are better, more-reliable forms of technology available to do this job in 2023 than a high-tech crayon. But as a jumping-off point, we are happy to see that most of America’s carriers are aware that we are on to the hoax of the 200-degree version, and we will be following this situation where it leads. We as railroad professionals are safer today than we were yesterday, but not as safe as we and our communities need to be tomorrow.

What our union and our Safety Committee need now is to find out if any of our members are still working for carriers operating with the 200-degree version. Science and common sense tell us that this equipment is not sufficient to keep you or your crew out of harm’s way. If you are still operating trains armed with one of these dangerously ineffective tempilstiks, please contact SMART-TD’s Government Affairs Department by emailing dbanks@smart-td.org.

We thank you for your help in this mission to keep our brothers and sisters safe. As always, we as a union need to be vigilant in looking out for one another.

BNSF and UP have made a solid investment in lobbyists in Colorado and they’re getting their money’s worth.

In 2023, SMART-TD Colorado State Legislative Director Carl Smith put forward a solid railroad safety bill to the Legislature that your union wholeheartedly supported. Brother Smith has been SLD for 11 years now and knows how to do his job in the statehouse effectively for our members, getting two-person crew legislation successfully in 2019. His experience told him that the best ally he could have to carry the bill was Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno.

Colorado’s Legislature is only in session for 120 days every year. Accordingly, they have a limit on how many bills any state rep or senator can put forward. Smith getting SMART-TD’s Rail Safety Act sponsored by the Senate Majority Leader was a major win for us and for railroad safety as a whole. But then Moreno got less and less enthusiastic about pushing for our bill as the session went on.

Eventually his office told Smith that they thought our legislation was a perfect fit for a bipartisan select committee — the Transportation Legislation Review Committee (TLRC) — focused on transportation bills. Our union was glad to hear that because it is a bipartisan committee with members from both the House of Representatives and the Senate and when bills are selected for support from the committee, they have a history of being unstoppable in the following years legislative session.

It all sounded promising. But shortly after diverting the bill to this group, Sen. Moreno abruptly resigned and accepted a high-ranking position on the staff of Denver’s new mayor.

Last month, Smith and his legislative board were given their opportunity to present their argument as to why their Rail Safety Act was worthy of the TLRC’s support. At this meeting, they found out that they had about a 33 percent chance of successfully making it through a gauntlet while competing against 13 others bills to become one of five bills endorsed by the committee.

It turns out the mastermind who put our rail safety bill into this competition wasn’t Moreno. It was the BNSF lobbyist who gets $80,000/month from the railroad to pull slick maneuvers like this one and kill railroad safety projects. This discovery was the part in this “Scooby Doo”-style caper where Brother Smith pulled the mask of the bad guys, and it turned out to be the Railroads and their lobbyists.  

The bills that SMART is now competing against include easy-to-get-behind items like child-seat safety, free public-transit passes for students and even state highway repairs. What BNSF, UP and their high-paid lobbyists have created a scenario where they don’t have to actively campaign against the value of a rail safety bill. That would create bad press for them and an obvious pressure point for SMART-TD and the rest of rail labor to call them out. Rather than lobbying against our bill, all they need to do is campaign FOR all the other bills. It is almost impossible to create bad press for themselves for supporting improvements to safety in children’s car seats! They just have to prop up five of the other 13 bills and never have to do the work of opposing SMART’s message on long trains, blocked crossings and the rest of the commons-sense protections we’ve been advancing.

On the positive side, Brother Smith has informed the international office that Colorado’s RSA has made it through the first hurdle of this competition. Fourteen bills that were presented in June were narrowed down to 10 finalists on Aug. 21st. Colorado’s rail safety bill is still standing.

The remaining 10 finalists will be cut to five winners and five losers October 3. We are asking for the support of all our members in the State of Colorado to reach out to the 20 members of the TLRC. Let them know that you are a Colorado voter and taxpayer who stands on the side of railroad safety.

Please follow the link provided to our Legislative Action Center to submit a prewritten comment to your legislators. They need to know that we are aware of what is going on and that we are keeping track of who supports our mission of rail safety and who does not.

In Colorado’s House District 47 alone, there are over 300 SMART-TD members. The representative in that district, Ty Winter, is on the TLRC. Representative Winter, when asked by SMART-TD for his support for the legislation responded in writing by saying that, “A major concern MY STAKEHOLDERS’ have with this bill is that it significantly cuts the train length; reducing the train length will substantially cut profits, burdening these companies.”   

Colorado members, we absolutely need to remind Rep Winter who his “STAKEHOLDERS” are. We work, live and pay taxes in this state and in his district. WE are his stakeholders — not the carriers, not the railroad bosses like Katie Farmer and Jim Vena of the bloated owning class, and not the lobbyists who make more in a month than our new hires make in a year!

“I’ve got two conductor trainees, both in the same state working for the same carrier whose lives have been cut short. The current condition of all railroad training programs is clearly in need of scrutiny. SMART-TD is not prepared to lose more of our men and women while we sit around and wait for a palatable solution. Our trainees are dying. I appreciate the FRA putting out a list of recommended fixes to this problem in their Safety Bulletin, but suggestions aren’t going to keep my people alive. It is time for actions and time for enforcement against these unsafe practices.”

SMART-TD President Jeremy R. Ferguson

Phone: (216) 228-9400 x3300

Department Email: news_td@smart-union.org

August 23, 2023

On August 6th, in CSX’s Cumberland Yard, SMART-TD lost one of our newest brothers in a temporary close clearance-related accident. This accident is made all the more tragic by the fact that it was 100% preventable.

On Wednesday, August 16th, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) put out a notice entitled, “Safety Bulletin 2023-05 in regard to the accident with the subject line of “Shoving Movement Close Clearance Fatality.” Though this is a decent summary of the raw facts of what happened, it doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story of the untimely death of SMART-TD Local 600’s Travis Bradley, the newly hired conductor trainee out of CSX’s Cumberland, Maryland, crew base, which followed the death of another CSX trainee out of Maryland, Derek Scott “D.S.” Little, on July 1.

FRA’s Safety Bulletin 2023-05 emphasizes three central points. First, is that railroad companies have got to do a better job of identifying pinch points in their tracks where conductors are at risk of coming into contact with buildings, equipment, or rail cars/locomotives in adjacent tracks. Secondly, there is an obvious need for railroads to provide adequate training to the front-line employees as to how to properly and safely train newly hired employees. Finally, Safety Notice 2023-05 points out the need to establish a guideline for the level of work experience needed for a conductor to qualify as a proper instructor of trainees. In this case, the conductor working with the now-deceased trainee had less than one year experience on the railroad when he was trusted with the safety of a student conductor.

Close clearances in railroading are quite simply that. They are pinch points where the rail cars can fit without a problem but that a conductor or trainman riding the side of the car may not. In some rail customer industries, these close clearance points are clearly marked with signs that say “Close Clearance, Stop and Dismount.” Occasionally you can find one of these signs in a yard owned by the railroad itself, but for the most part, the railroads leave decisions on whether or not a close clearance is too close up to the muscle memory of the employee conducting the move.

What the FRA is saying in this bulletin, and that SMART-TD fully agrees with, is that time and effort needs to be put in on the part of these billion-dollar corporations to do studies of their rail yards to establish where these pinch points occur and make them known to employees. The railroads must properly identify and label these close clearances for the safety of all their employees, especially their newly hired conductors who are still learning the territory.

The second point made by FRA in Safety Bulletin 2023-05 is equally valid. Railroads are hiring new conductors as fast as they can get them screened and into hiring sessions. As new conductors are entering their workforce by the thousands, they do not have an infrastructure in place to teach their existing workforce how to safely and effectively act as On the Job Training (OJT) instructors for these new recruits. In a work environment as dangerous as our country’s railroads have proven to be historically, it is unthinkable that there is not a program in place to train the trainers. It is in most scenarios still the luck of the draw. If you are the trainee due to get called to work next, you are paired with the crew that is lined up to work that train. Not all railroad professionals have the natural ability or interest in teaching trainees. Many of these conductors and engineers show up to work and find out they have a trainee for the first time while they are walking to the locomotive having never been trained how to conduct themselves in this role with any semblance of keeping themselves or their trainee safe over the course of their work duties.

Finally, FRA also pointed out that there is no threshold for how much experience is required for a conductor to qualify as a trainer. With no exaggeration, there are many cases when on a conductor’s first call to work as a marked-up and qualified conductor on their own, they have a trainee assigned to them. This is neither productive nor safe for either conductor involved. The trainer has very little idea of how to keep him/herself safe and complete the tasks at hand, let alone do the same for the trainee. It is also problematic that this very green conductor has their reaction time slowed by the distraction of having a trainee shadowing them and asking questions.

SMART is calling for a threshold to be established by FRA to determine the amount of experience and level of instruction a conductor or trainmen must have before being tasked with training a new hire trainee.

SMART-TD has issued the following internal Safety Advisory to its members to begin a healthy dialogue between conductor trainees and their mentor conductors on these critical issues.

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If you’re interested in speaking more about rail worker safety, and the changes SMART-TD is calling for, we’d be happy to connect you with:

SMART Transportation Division President Jeremy Ferguson

President Jeremy Ferguson, a member of Local 313 in Grand Rapids, Mich., was elected president of SMART’s Transportation Division in 2019.

President Ferguson, an Army veteran, started railroading in 1994 as a conductor on CSX at Grand Rapids, Mich., and was promoted to engineer in 1995. Fergusson headed the recent national rail negotiations for the union with the nation’s rail carriers.

SMART Transportation Division National Legislative Director Gregory Hynes

Greg Hynes is a fifth-generation railroader and was elected national legislative director in 2019.

Hynes served on the SMART Transportation Division National Safety Team that assists the National Transportation Safety Board with accident investigations, from 2007 – 2014.

In 2014, he was appointed to the Federal Railroad Administration’s Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC), which develops new railroad regulatory standards.

Hynes was appointed the first chairperson of the UTU Rail Safety Task Force in 2009 and served in that capacity until being elected SMART Transportation Division alternate national legislative director at the Transportation Division’s 2014 convention.

SMART Transportation Division Alternate National Legislative Director Jared Cassity

Jared Cassity, a member of Local 1377 (Russell, Ky.), was elected to the office of alternate national legislative director at the Second SMART Transportation Division Convention in August 2019 and became director of the TD National Safety Team in June 2021.

Cassity started his railroad career with CSX in September 2005 and was promoted to engineer in 2008.

In addition to his elected roles, he has been a member of the National Safety Team since 2014, where he was subsequently elected to the position of Alternate Director (East) for the NST in 2016. Likewise, he was elected by his fellow peers of state directors to serve as the directors’ representative on the CSX Safety Model Executive Board in 2013.

The SMART Transportation Division would like to thank all our members who have been filling out the safety forms when PTC doesn’t work as intended, when long trains make handheld radios useless, when signals drop out and when a DP units fail and there’s a mile of cars between the crew and the ability to fix the problem. 

All these reports from the ground are the ammo we need as a union to fight the carriers for you.

As railroaders with any time under our belts at all, we know that it is never a good idea to take the railroad you work for at face value when they try to convince you that a proposed change they are is “small” or “won’t have any effect” on you or your co-workers. That skepticism we all have toward the carriers obviously ends up being amplified when 19 railroads come together to request a “minor and insignificant” change to a federal statute on rail safety.

On June 28, that is exactly what happened when 19 railroads, including all six of the Class I freight carriers, submitted a joint request to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) asking them to change the definition of the term “initial terminal. (PDF below).

This alliance of would-be competitors rallied together around the cause of changing the official definition, saying that they only wanted to change it in terms of PTC rules. Since you must have a functioning PTC to take the main from an initial terminal, the carriers claimed they were concerned that passenger trains that change directions at the end of the line and go the opposite direction under a new train symbol are getting stranded and unable to move their passengers because of the current definition of “initial terminal” for a new train. They also put forward an example of a coal train in relay service that goes into the coal plant empty under one train symbol and leaves under a new train symbol when loaded. Their argument is that when the train symbol changes, if the PTC doesn’t reinitialize they currently aren’t permitted to take the main and head to the end user. This is because the current definition of that coal plant as the initial terminal of the loaded train under the new symbol means that it was not an en route failure for the second train.

This explanation was difficult to believe for us here at SMART-TD. Relay service on coal trains isn’t where these Fortune 500 companies are making their fortunes, and there is no reason to believe that 19 freight railroads are reaching out because they are concerned for the well-being of Amtrak and the convenience of their ridership.

When this joint request was published, SMART-TD’s National Legislative Department went to work on getting to the bottom of what these companies were trying to accomplish with this seemingly harmless changing of the meaning of a term. What we figured out was just as predictably deceptive as you would expect.

The first way that using their newly minted definition of the initial terminal would benefit them affects the way one railroad interchanges with another company. If the PTC doesn’t load for the new leg of the trip, under the proposed new definition, this second railroad could take off without having PTC available, and they could treat it as an en route failure even though that is a new train on their lines.

The second way it would benefit the company is that under the current PTC rules if a train is rerouted, the PTC information must be updated so the miles on the alternative route are run with PTC. This change in verbiage would have changed that, too. These companies can’t be slowed down by waiting for their own safety-related software to be updated. This proposed change would have been a permission slip for them to send crews on alternate routes into territory they, by definition, are less familiar with, without the safety redundancy of PTC.

In a public comment sent to the FRA on Aug. 8, 2023, by Greg Hynes, SMART-TD’s National Legislative Director, SMART pointed out that the reasons and examples the railroads gave FRA as to why they wanted this change of definition were nonsense. NLD Hynes demonstrated the real incentive for the railroad was the ability to run thousands of rail miles without having to be hampered by federal regulations meant to safeguard our members and the communities we run through.

Hynes went on to describe that, in his career of fighting against railroad companies’ regulatory overreaches, he saw this request as being the first chess move the railroads were using to set up the board for a more-aggressive offensive maneuver on their next turn. He told the FRA that by changing the definition of the initial terminal now only in the context of PTC, it was logical that they would come back to the government later and ask it to change the definition of the initial terminal when it comes to the topic of Class I brake tests. He described in detail that this proposal from the railroads to “make the verbiage consistent and avoid confusion” would have devastating effects on the safety of our nation’s rails.

Last week, on Aug. 14, the FRA made its decision. FRA in its dedication to public safety, and in reference to SMART-TD’s concerns and those of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department, officially denied the 19 railroads’ request to change the definition of “initial terminal.” (PDF below).

On paper, this victory looks to be merely the maintaining of the status quo, but it cannot be overstated how big of a victory this was for rail labor and common sense. It is a demonstration that SMART-TD’s National Legislative Office of three people outgunned the legal and lobbying wings of 19 combined railroads. The railroads had a massive manpower advantage, and the majority of their people have law degrees. But what they don’t have is railroad experience and the power of 100,000 men and women behind their words.

We can’t thank you enough for your support.

Please keep these reports coming. And, rest assured, your union will remain in the trenches fighting these carriers every step of the way.

Local 600 in Cumberland, Md., is mourning the loss of CSX conductor trainee Travis Bradley alongside his family and friends.

Brother Travis Bradley, a conductor trainee out of Local 600 in Cumberland, Md., died after an at-work accident on Aug. 7

Shortly after midnight August 7, Brother Bradley, 40, died from injuries he received Aug. 6 while working in an incident involving a close clearance in a yard track. Brother Bradley referred to his new career in railroading as his dream job. Unfortunately, his career and life were both tragically cut short in Cumberland Yard.

Bradley came to the railroad in hopes of providing for his wife and three children. Like most of us, he was willing to sacrifice holidays, sleep and any aspect of a normal lifestyle to bring his family the security of railroad worker wages, healthcare and retirement.

As a trainee, Brother Bradley’s family is not protected by the same level of benefits that non-probationary employees are. The ugly truth is that his wife and children will not be taken care of by the railroad in the way that Travis had set out.

We all began as trainees, and even if it was 30 years ago, many of us remember having a close call while learning how to railroad safely. Brother Bradley didn’t survive that moment in his young career.

SMART-TD is asking all those who can identify with Brother Bradley and are able to do so, to please consider following this link to the GoFundMe campaign established to benefit Bradley’s wife, Nichole, and their three young daughters.

SMART-TD extends its condolences to the Bradley family and all our members in Local 600 and thanks Local 600’s Local Chairperson Danny Strang for establishing the GoFundMe campaign to benefit Brother Bradley’s family. Your leadership and willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty for the men and women of your crew base is appreciated.

Read Brother Bradley’s obituary