long trains anymore?

states, rail unions, shippers, legislators and federal agencies

Texas Rail Advocates, takes out his tape measure.

tial safety risks.

A study on the effects of long trains is due by June 2024. Allan Rutter, Texas A&M Transportation Institute Freight and Investment Analysis Division Head is part of a team studying train dynamics, handling, braking, distributed power and employee communications to determine if changes are on the horizon.

Rutter, a former FRA Administrator, spoke at the Southwestern Rail Conference in Texas earlier in April and discussed the long train study, which was ordered by Congress and being administered by the Transportation Research Board.

“How conductors and engineers in the cab are trained to operate longer trains, scheduling and efficiency of passenger trains as they move in and around those longer trains in shorter sidings and what happens when highway grade crossings are blocked by these longer trains will also be studied,” according to Rutter. 4

The impetus for the FRA mandated study was not the recent East Palestine, Ohio derailment which forced the evacuation of town residents, but dates back to a 2017 derailment in Pennsylvania when a 178 car long train, over two miles long, derailed.

Motorists who wait and wait at highway rail crossings for long trains to clear have been buoyed by states proposing legislation to limit long trains. A bill filed in the Nevada legislature would regulate train length to a maximum of 7500 feet, about 1.4 miles long.

Surface Transportation Board (STB) ViceChair Karen Hedlund, speaking at the same Southwestern Rail Conference, said “a number of states are passing maximum train length laws. Whether state actions are preempted by federal legislation or STB authority will be for the courts to decide.”

Hedlund said the STB recently approved marriage of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern Railway, now known as CPKC, included a stipulation about blocked rail crossings. “The STB will be keeping an eye on the new CPKC and hold their feet to the fire for blocking grade crossings,” according to Hedlund. “Under the general code of operating rules it provides, when practical, a standing train or switching train must avoid blocking a crossing longer than ten minutes.”

A report by the organisation ProPublica points to Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), a cost-cutting strategy that calls for longer trains with fewer employees as a safety issue.

"In the past, about a 1.4 mile-long train was considered huge. Now trains are two, even three miles long. Long trains are just one tenet of PSR," said Dan Schwartz, one of the

ProPublica reporters who investigated PSR. Schwartz said that since 2015 railroads have laid off about a fifth of the workforce with a lot of the cuts in maintenance workers. “That leaves fewer people to catch trains in disrepair,” according to Schwartz.

Longer and fewer trains have resulted in more rail shipper complaints to the Surface Transportation Board about delayed deliveries. The STB has received an increased number of complaints from shippers about missed switch-outs, long transit times, cars stranded in yards, changes in operating plans and poor communications about shipments.