Safe Performance Center Team Members Cover the Base

(l-r): JaCorey Murray, Chuck Teeters, Amanda Olson, and Travis Herod

The Watco Safe Performance Center (SPC) in Fairfield, Alabama, provides safety instruction for locomotive engineers and conductors, team members working in maintenance of way, and those working in railcar repair, as well as other safety and leadership training for all Watco. This is the second in a series of Dispatch articles introducing team members at the center.

Travis Herod

Travis Herod, who has served as senior vice president of Environmental Health and Safety for eight years, manages all activities at the SPC. Prior to that, he was a safety director and regional safety manager. He started with Watco at the Stillwater Central Railroad in 2004.

Herod holds industry safety certificates that include Master Safety Professional (MSP) through the National Association of Safety Professionals (NASP), and a Certificate in Safety Management through the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). In 2020, he was named the American Short Line and Regional Railroads Association Safety Professional of the Year.

He shapes training not only at Watco but also in the railroad industry. He helps with the General Code of Operating Rules (GCOR) as the acting voting member for the short line group on the general code committee. And for the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA), he sits on the safety and training committee, leading its subcommittee for electronic device rules.

JaCorey Murray

Currently JaCorey Murray, manager of mechanical safety & training, is Watco’s sole in-house mechanical trainer at the SPC. He’s been with Watco 12 years, and started his career as a locomotive mechanic in a diesel shop which became Watco’s Birmingham Terminal Railway.

Murray came to the SPC last year. He provides training in Birmingham and on Watco properties. He trains the locomotive and freight car mechanics (carmen), covering GCOR and other mechanical safety rules. Part of his two-week course also covers required periodic inspections for locomotives.

Besides providing instructor-led in-person training, he helps with computer-based training (CBT). He just finished creating a mechanical safety orientation CBT course and is now working on building out new training for carmen.

Amanda Olson

Amanda Olson joined the SPC in 2017. In her role as safety administrative assistant, Olson supports all needs at the center. She keeps track of safety incidents, near-misses, and other records in the VelocityEHS system. Similarly, she manages InfoRail, the software for reporting and tracking compliance with required training. She fields calls, answers emails, and prints team member certification cards. For the many students who come to the SPC for training, she makes the arrangements for hotels, lunches, and more.

A recent addition to her duties is instructing team members in CPR and first aid, which are required for all who come through training at the SPC.

Chuck Teeters

Chuck Teeters’ Watco career began in 2012, but his safety career began long before that.

In 1993, Teeters started in safety as a firefighter and trainer with the U.S. Navy. Later, while a conductor at BNSF Railway, he earned a bachelor’s degree in occupational safety and health and in 2013, while working at Watco, earned a master’s degree in the same field. At Watco, Teeters started as a regional manager covering rail training for terminals and ports in North Dakota and Canada. He moved to the SPC in late 2018.

Today, as manager of learning development, Teeters helps create safety training. His primary role is to team with Online Training Manager Kelli Frazier of People Services to write computer-based training. Teeters also has taught CPR and first aid during his entire tenure at Watco. This training took on new significance in 2017. While at a Watco field location, Teeters suffered a heart attack. His life was saved by a team member who Teeters had instructed just two weeks earlier.