The Senate confirmed Tom Perez as Labor secretary on a 54-46 party-line vote July 18, making him the second of President Barack Obama’s nominees to win confirmation this week following a deal to preserve the filibuster. Perez won cloture Wednesday on a 60-40 vote, with six Re [...]
Joining their fellow train and engine workers employed by the DeQueen & Eastern Railroad, the company’s yardmasters July 17 chose the SMART Transportation Division as their bargaining representative. By a two-to-one margin, the yardmasters opted for SMART TD. Train [...]
WASHINGTON – Airline pilots spend nearly all their time monitoring automated cockpit systems rather than “hand-flying” planes, but their brains aren’t wired to continually pay close attention to instruments that rarely fail or show discrepancies. As a result [...]
While the focus of the SMART Transportation Division’s regional meetings has always been on education for its members, attendees are provided the opportunity for a little relaxation as well. Those attending the Anaheim regional meeting scheduled for July 29-31 are in fo [...]
A runaway oil train that killed scores of people when it slammed into a Quebec town is bringing renewed calls on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border for tougher safety rules for railroads. Regulators and watchdogs have sought for years improvements to a common tank car desig [...]
HERMON, Maine — The runaway Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway train that plowed through a small Quebec town killing 50 people on July 6 had one engineer assigned to it. The American union of railway workers representing most of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway workers [...]
FARNHAM, Quebec — Locomotive engineer Tom Harding was likely the last person at the controls of the runaway train that rolled into downtown Lac-Mégantic Saturday morning, causing untold death and destruction. But though Harding himself has remained silent, a new picture is em [...]
A team from the Federal Railroad Administration is expected to arrive in Maine on Thursday to begin a comprehensive inspection of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway’s tracks, operations and equipment. If inspectors find safety problems on the 275 miles of track [...]
A new and improved site – www.yourtracktohealth.com – replaces the previous Railroad Information Depot (www.rrinfodepot.com). Bookmark the new website address for easy future access: www.yourtracktohealth.com. The new yourtracktohealth.com is your online gateway to informatio [...]
ROANOKE, Va. – According to Robin Chapman, a spokesperson for Norfolk Southern (NS), 170 furloughed NS employees are headed back to work. Of those hired back, 60 were hired back permanently to train services and 70 were transferred to temporary positions that are guaranteed u [...]
