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Senate Bill 24 - A personal call to action


Woodrift

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Hello fellow members of Illinois Carry,

 

I'd like to ask a personal favor from you in regards to railroads and two person crews.

 

Senate Bill 24 is essentially requiring any train in Illinois to have a two man crew. The hearing for the bill is taking place on March 5th, and witnesses slips can be filled out. The links can be located below.

 

http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=24&GAID=15&DocTypeID=SB&LegId=114134&SessionID=108&GA=101

 

http://my.ilga.gov/WitnessSlip/Create/114134?committeeHearingId=16605&LegislationId=114134&LegislationDocumentId=145228&SCommittees3%2F30%2F2019-page=1&committeeid=0&chamber=S&nodays=30&_=1551372939085

 

The reason for my asking of this is that PTC for major railroads is coming quick. Many major railroads have made arrangements to remove conductors from over the road trains, since PTC is essentially doing the conductor's job of relaying to the engineer of any speed restrictions, planned work for men and machines fouling the track that we need to contact, and ensuring we don't violate the end of our train's "limits".

 

While it might sound okay in theory, in reality it can be very troublesome. Sometimes the only thing keeping us awake is the engineer and conductor talking about random stuff when we've been up for 12 hours waiting for a phone call to go into work, and the phone rings to take a train out of town at midnight after you lay down to catch some sleep.

 

Not only that, this can easily become a major safety issue. When a train has an issue along the line, and it's stopped blocking road crossings, it can cause major delays due to having to wait for a conductor to drive out to the train and begin rectifying the issue, and block emergency responders trying to get to the other side. It can be something simple as a brake being stuck on, or it can be as serious as a derailment and subsequent fire involving hazardous materials. At that point, the conductor is quite literally the first responder to the scene. Every second counts when the train needs to move ASAP when an emergency situation is present, but instead you have to wait for the conductor to arrive, versus already being on the train and can immediately begin rectifying the issue.

 

After all this, there are also jobs on the line. If railroads get their way and won't need a conductor on every train, then I'm sure you can imagine the massive amount of layoffs.

 

Thank you for reading my rant. Whether you agree or disagree with the bill, please forward the link for filling out witness slips.

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OP may know what PTC is but the rest of us have to Google it. It might be helpful if you could explain Positive Train Control..........

I tried to give a quick breakdown of it relaying instructions to the engineer without going into too much detail. I'll keep that in mind though.

 

I'd support a bill that would ban middle of the night train whistle blowing. People need to sleep!

For that you'll have to talk to your local townsfolk. They're the ones that tell the railroads not to use the horn. But, be ready to pay for upgrades to the crossings.
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OP may know what PTC is but the rest of us have to Google it. It might be helpful if you could explain Positive Train Control..........

I tried to give a quick breakdown of it relaying instructions to the engineer without going into too much detail. I'll keep that in mind though.

I'd support a bill that would ban middle of the night train whistle blowing. People need to sleep!

For that you'll have to talk to your local townsfolk. They're the ones that tell the railroads not to use the horn. But, be ready to pay for upgrades to the crossings.

oh, they upgraded the heck out of our crossings...concrete barricades, lcd signs, loud announcements a train or trains are coming, etc. and they still blow the whistles!
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OP may know what PTC is but the rest of us have to Google it. It might be helpful if you could explain Positive Train Control..........

I tried to give a quick breakdown of it relaying instructions to the engineer without going into too much detail. I'll keep that in mind though.

 

I'd support a bill that would ban middle of the night train whistle blowing. People need to sleep!

For that you'll have to talk to your local townsfolk. They're the ones that tell the railroads not to use the horn. But, be ready to pay for upgrades to the crossings.

oh, they upgraded the heck out of our crossings...concrete barricades, lcd signs, loud announcements a train or trains are coming, etc. and they still blow the whistles!

 

Your City can fill out the required paperwork to have your Town a designated No Horn Zone.

 

All of my towns crossings have been upgraded because of the high speed rail and our city filled out the paperwork to be a No Horn Zone.

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OP may know what PTC is but the rest of us have to Google it. It might be helpful if you could explain Positive Train Control..........

I tried to give a quick breakdown of it relaying instructions to the engineer without going into too much detail. I'll keep that in mind though.

 

I'd support a bill that would ban middle of the night train whistle blowing. People need to sleep!

For that you'll have to talk to your local townsfolk. They're the ones that tell the railroads not to use the horn. But, be ready to pay for upgrades to the crossings.

oh, they upgraded the heck out of our crossings...concrete barricades, lcd signs, loud announcements a train or trains are coming, etc. and they still blow the whistles!

 

Be aware that even in Quiet Zones, there are particular times in which we are required to sound the horn.

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In the last few decades long haul freight trains have gone from a standard crew of 5 to today's standard of 2. (The "featherbedding" labor wars)

 

Now we keep hearing about the inevitability of driver-less cars, and driver-less semi-trucks.

 

Is the ultimate railroad goal of this to have zero-crew trains?

 

After that, why not have zero-crew planes? This world is really changing, and there will be a lot of very bad consequences.

 

But just think of the cost savings!

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It's in the original post. I linked both the bill details and the link to file a witness slip. Probably should've labeled that.

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And what about medical emergencies that could happen. They can sometimes happen quite quickly and if you are by yourself hurtling down the tracks in a fully loaded freight train and become incapacitated, that is an recipe for a serious tragedy...

Without getting too technical:

 

Today's locomotives are almost (and maybe) always equipped with a "crew alerter". Alerters display both a visual alarm (flashing red lights) and an audible alarm in the cab if they don't sense a crew initiated function (throttle change, whistle, bell, sanders, manual reset of the device) in a given time. I think generally 45 seconds. So...if the lone engineer keels over, the train should only go solo for 45 seconds max before the device idles the throttle and initiates a "penalty application" of the brakes. Comforting...right? Especially if you're the guy in the boonies lying on the cab floor with nobody to help.

 

To add to what the OP said: I spent a working lifetime railroading. I know how much a good conductor can help an engineer. And no "safety system" can replace that.

 

PS: done.

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It's in the original post. I linked both the bill details and the link to file a witness slip. Probably should've labeled that.

Yep I thought one was a link to a HB bill of the same nature.

 

Thanks

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