Your thoughts on the lack of security on your nation's freight hauling railroads?

Question

Early on January 16, 2006, two boys escaped from a juvenile detention home in Nelsonville, Ohio, (USA), broke into a building that houses a Hocking Valley Scenic Railway locomotive, and took the locomotive on a 12 mile joyride before being apprehended by police.

If we can’t secure a potential weapon of mass destruction from kids, how could we ever think our rail networks are safe from terrorists?

This industry has ignored the problem far too long and it’s high time our legislators stepped in to protect citizens. Enacting a rail security bill could have prevented most of this and other incidents, including a fatality due to train sabotage.

This is your wake up call, my friends. I would strongly urge everyone to contact your government representatives at all levels. I can assure you that an average freight train has a huge destructive potential, far in excess of what has been accomplished through the use of four commercial jetliners.

So, what will you do?

Correction: The incident described above occurred in January, 2007.

Of course we can never protect every mile of railroad right of way, but there is no mandate for railroad operators to protect access to facilities of fixed location. This must be done. The carriers will not spend the money for additional security voluntarily.

Thank you stephenn. You illustrated the point perfectly. It is not easy to hop on and get under way. But if two juvenile delinquents can do it anyone can.

Not all locomotives are sent to nice secure service facility each night. They are left out on line and unprotected where ever the local freight trains are tying up each night, and these aren't scenic railway engines. They are freight locomotives with access to main track.

Which means they have access to Amtrak or a rolling bomb. This is no BS.

More thoughts please?

And it gets even worse. Do you know what happens when a train crew expires on the Hours of Service with insufficient time to reach the terminal? They are relieved. IF there is a crew available, they take charge of the train. If NOT, then the train is left in a siding, completely unattended, with no derail protection for the main line. Now you got a whole train at your disposal.

You know those cool train simulator games out now? Why do you think they are called "simulators." A few bucks, 36 hours and several pots of coffee and you are on your way.

People are largely uninformed because only a few are screaming about this stupidity. Its like being on a ship on fire, in plain sight, yelling it's on fire, but evetyone seems to be content to let it burn to the waterline before calling the fire department.

The leader to this question was an excerpt. Go to my 360 blog to read more information.

A grass roots movement is THE ONLY WAY these issues are to be dealt with.

Many rails visit this site regularly, and I am sure they can verify everything I have written here.

Locks are a joke. Locomotives have those handy-dandy windows and a sledge hammer gets you immediate access to the cab. Put a diamond saw against the hasp of a lock on a switch stand and a couple of minutes later, presto! You're a switchman.

The rules used to require locomotives left where derail protection was unavailable had to be chained to the rail. No more. The rules require only that "hand brakes" be applied. This is to prevent movement if the air brakes leak off. If there are three big jacks on the point, they can pull cars with handbrakes set with ease.

So, is the picture becoming a little clearer?

Excellent responses and getting better.

There is a reasonable solution to aleviate the OPPORTUNITIES provided by leaving trains and engines out on line. The reason why trains are left when a crew is releived on the Hours of Service is because there are NO crews to relieve them. The reason there are no crews is because the carriers will not maintain a sufficient work force to handle the volume of traffic. They don't need to hire cops, they need to hire Conductors and Engineers, so the trains won't have to be left out for anyone to take control of.

This is also the same reason why chronic fatigue is so rampant in the rail industry as. The carriers owe their allegience to the share holders and the rest can go to hell. Any engineer, which is all of them, who is dead on his feet is nearly as dangerous, but it continues, day after day after day. The unions aren't screaming for increased wages. They want rest for the crews and security on our rail networks.

More input, please?

Answer 1

There's no easy answer to this one.

As you've detailed in your question and additional details, you and I both know how vulnerable the rail system is nationwide. I've left trains in remote locations, unattended, on numerous occasions; numerous more occasions, I've picked them up from similar locations.

A simple security bill won't do the trick. There needs to be a thorough examination of the national rail system, top to bottom, leaving no stone unturned. Whoever leads such an inquiry much gather information from as many useful sources possible: national and local law enforcement, the railways, railway employees, citizens, and any other group that can provide viable, relevant, and useful input.

In 1986, after a disastrous head-on collision near Hinton Alberta, Mr. Judge Foisey led an inquiry into safety practices on Canadian railways. His report examined the railway not just from the outside, but the inside too. He learned about the railway "culture", and how it's effects contributed to the accident. But he didn't stop there.

Foisey made recommendations and demands in his final report as to what was needed for improvements. He thoroughly researched his suggestions, to make sure that they could be, and would be, implemented for maximum effectiveness.

Such a thorough examination is what is needed. However, until something disastrous happens, it's unlikely anyone will be moved to do such a thing.

Answer 2

One serious problem here in the UK is youngsters larking about on rail lines or dropping heavy items e.g. bricks onto trains from bridges. It's impossible to patrol every section of track 24/7 so the best remedy (which I'm all for) is to educate youngsters (or at least try to) about trains & how dangerous they can be if you don't take care.

Train theft is comparatively rare but there was an incident recently when 2 men made off with a shunting engine. They got into the cab, started it up and moved it about a freight yard for about an hour, changing the points and shunting it onto different tracks, before making their getaway. All this was recorded on CCTV. No damage was done to the engine or any other property and nobody was hurt, but it could easily have been a different story and it does make you wonder about rail security.

My really big gripe is about the transport of spent nuclear fuel by rail, in special trains which follow main routes which are also used by passenger trains. Most people would not be able to tell the trains apart from an ordinary freight train - they consist basically of flat wagons with containers and the nuclear warning notice is about the size of a cigarette packet, so easy to spot, lol. Campaigners in Bristol recently worked out that when one of these trains is passing on the through road of a passenger station and there is a passenger train on the adjacent platform road, the distance between nuclear train and passenger train is less than the government recommended minimum.

About 20 years ago the government crash-tested one of these nuclear container wagons at 100mph just to reassure everyone how safe they were. The locomotive and carriages were smashed to pieces but the nuclear flask came through the collision unscathed - and just to make doubly sure the whole thing was safe as houses they didn't put any nuclear material in it.

Very reassuring.

Answer 3

We could just hire more and more security until every person in the damn country works for homeland security.

Or we could admit that America is a gigantic place which is far, far too big to EVER protect, and we can no more stop every last terrorist than we can stop every last drug run or every last illegal immigrant.

And that maybe it's time to start looking at our size as an asset. America is like those giant spaceships in Independence Day... we're so big nobody can do enough damage to us to have any real effect. The best they can hope for is to stick a splinter in our toe and hope we'll freak out.

Parallel to that is the experience of railroads in full-blown war, particularly in Indochina. Bomb as we did, we could not keep the railroads closed for more than a day or two. The damage caused by war was nothing compared to the damage routinely caused by weather... and the crews were accustomed to dealing with that. What could a terrorist (or even the Soviets) do that could compare to Katrina?

Further, the USA has 150 years of actively protecting our railroads in war from infiltrators - and attacking the other guys'!

I believe the kind of railroad security Hoghead hopes for is impracticable. However the fact is, railroads don't get attacked much... and when they do get attacked, it's tough to do them mortal damage. How much expense do we bear protecting ourselves from increasingly unlikely events? Ultimately it boils down to using expensive government intrusion to attempt to create that "warm fuzzy feeling of safety" -- and that is not just unrealistic, it's delusional.

What do I do? I realize that there is no absolute safety, and Safety and Freedom are incompatible. Look at the people on the money. They signed a document that all but guaranteed their death when King George caught 'em. It's pretty clear where THEY stood on the question of freedom vs. safety.

Freedom isn't free. If the price is a terrorist attack likely to horror (but not injure) me, then I'll consider that the bargain of a lifetime!

Answer 4

This is one of the reasons I am not in favor of remote control. All you would need to do is steal a remote and then interfere with a regular switching job to create havok. Also, in Iraq, terrorists have started to attach their truckbombs to trucks carrying chlorine (or other toxics) and then exploding the whole mess - imagine what would happen with a tank car...

About all you can do is make the engines a lot harder to operate (like have a reverser with an ID chip in it, and don't let the reverser get stolen, or make the engine much more complicated to get going, like a combo lock on the start mechanism). It's pretty easy to see if something is strapped to a tank car, so you would need to just store it in plain view, away from a roadway or another type of car (like an explosives-laden boxcar or something). I have told others that a train bomb won't be very effective, since MOST yards and tracks are far from densely populated areas (in the middle of nowhere), but there are always rail terminals near big cities...

It's a tough question, but I think it can be solved. Better security technology exists today, it just needs to be implemented, and that won't be cheap. Also, there are a lot of unemployed folks out there, and there are a lot of railyards to patrol - I'm sure something can be worked out. That won't be cheap either. Maybe we can add a security division to the FRA, or assign rail security to the Secret Service or something.

Answer 5

First lets look at the senic railways. The ones I have been on run on old abandoned tracks that don't connect to main lines or connect thru locked switches. To start the train I would think that they would have had some preivous knowledge on how to start the engine and engage the traction motors. I mean lets face it it isn't like getting in you family car and turning the key and away you go. As far as freight rail I think that they are as secure as they can be. Most big rail companys have security or their own police force. Even 14 years ago when I was driving truck I thought that the rail yards I had been in were secure as possible. As far as the tracks your right they cannot secure every mlile of track it would be financhally impossible. The best thing they have done in that area is the newer welded rails instead of bolted rails. It would make it harder for some one to sabbotage the rails

Answer 6

First of all, rail security is not just about securing idling engines. Engines idle because they run off of diesel, in the winter it would be unproductive to turn them off and on constantly. The real issue with rail security is the cargo and transport. For example: Do you know how easy it would be to get ahold of a switch key on ebay and divert a train? I have contacted ebay about this before, most of them are historic keys not currently in use but there are a few modern ones on there every now and then and you don't want them in the wrong hands. I'll discontinue using examples because then I'm just handing out bad ideas.

Security is as much a federal problem as it is a corporate problem. Take a look at the corruption in the rail industry then just sit back and wait for disaster.

Answer 7

While most, if not all yards are protected by the railroad police,
I do agree with you whole-heartedly when you say more needs to be done. Perhaps it has come to the point where we need to think about such measures as having armed guards on each train. Both freight and passenger. And in the yards, and out on the line. And maybe we need to have closed circuit TV's and cameras throughout all the yards as well. But all this is just my opinion, it isn't much.

Answer 8

I wasn't aware that was possible. I do think that the security concerns can go too far. I'm not a liberal crazy, but it will soon come a time that we are spending too much time and money trying to secure every possible thing. When will we have to acknowledge that we can't spend tons of money on security. Maybe the money would be better spent on catching the crazies before they can do something destructive...

Answer 9

i work for the RR and I'm also concerned about safety.. we are well aware of what we carry, and have expressed concern about this issue. We still have not heard anything. Until then we all do our best to make sure out trains move safely trough neighborhoods.. you guys can help .. if u see anything out the ordinary please call the rail road ..
we can't see 100 cars behind us ...

Answer 10

I am very concerned about ALL railway security, especially after reading your account(s) and added comments. I would contact my representatives, but in my area, Chicago, Illinois, I am probably the ONLY railfan that saw this and said reps aren't exactly going to pay attention to ONE puny little voice (mine).

They BARELY listen to many movers and shakers, much less a mere handful of railfans.