ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607080124
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRED BAYLES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lance McClaren sees it unfold again in his nightmares.
The huge blue-and-white locomotive looming out of the night to smash his train in a shower of sparks. His desperate scramble up the steep sand hill in a lightning storm as 30-ton coal cars fly through the air.
And over and over, he sees the locomotive bearing down on the parked train as if it didn't exist.
``He appeared to be operating his train as if he had green signals,'' says McClaren, whose days of engineering ended with the June 8, 1994 crash. ``I have no idea why he was doing that. There's only two people who would know and they're dead.''
But safety investigators believe they know.
The National Transportation Safety Board says the crew of the Burlington Northern locomotive was exhausted when its train hit two other freights at 3:25 a.m. near Thedford, Neb.
The conductor, the NTSB said, had only three hours rest in 27 hours and may have been asleep; the engineer was so tired that ``fatigue likely adversely affected his judgment and contributed to the accident.''
The NTSB has named fatigue as a factor in at least 10 serious railroad crashes in the past decade, including the Feb. 9 commuter train collision at Secaucus, N.J., that left three dead.
Its warnings to the railroad industry, its unions and Congress to take the issue of sleep seriously have taken on a greater urgency as a resurgent business keeps the rails humming day and night.
But a solution is not quick in coming. Union members worry about smaller paychecks; railroad executives worry about smaller bottom lines. Congress, which has sole control over railroad work hours, is hesitant to act.
``The companies will tell you there is a fatigue problem. The unions will tell you there's a fatigue problem. Everybody has horror stories, but no one wants to go out on a limb and do something,'' says Bob Lauby, chief of the NTSB's railroad division.
Meanwhile, out on the rails, crews who weave mile-and-a-half-long trains of hazardous materials through curves and mountain passes talk about accidents waiting to happen.
``The last trip I made, I fell asleep past two or three signals, and I can't tell you what they were,'' said one CSX engineer from the Southeast who asked not to be identified.
``I could have run through a stop signal and hit another train,'' the engineer said. ``I could have hit an automobile and woke up and never known he was there. I could have exceeded the speed limit and derailed a train carrying hazardous materials and killed a lot of people.''
Said another engineer: ``You sit back in awe because you know people are nodding off and something terrible is going to happen one of these days.''
Engineers and conductors who spoke with The Associated Press - despite railroad rules against it, and the accompanying threat of disciplinary action - repeated similar stories. Working seven or more days in a row, fighting their bodies' surrender to the circadian rhythms of sleep at 4 in the morning, they confessed to falling asleep or operating drowsy.
Under the Hours of Service Act, a law that retains much of its original 1907 language, train crews can work no more than 12 hours with 10 hours off in between shifts. They get eight hours off if they work under 12 hours.
But even when well-rested, the crews must also fight the body's own cycles, a biological imperative that makes wakefulness in the hours between 1 and 5 in the morning a struggle.
Rail traffic has jumped by 27 percent over the past 10 years. At the same time, the number of train crewmen is half what it was in 1980.
Instead of five-men crews of two decades ago, most trains carry only an engineer and conductor. The pressure to keep the trains moving may mean long stretches of uninterrupted work days and around the clock calls from dispatchers.
Engineers say the toll is heavy: little family contact, divorce and a grinding, hopeless exhaustion in exchange for pay ranging from $45,000 to $85,000 a year.
``You almost feel like a slave,'' says Robert Mannick, a CSX engineer and union official. ``It's a job that pays fairly good money, but then you see what you have to do for it.''
All sides agree this kind of scheduling isn't safe. A Federal Railroad Administration study that observed engineers working in a full-scale simulator found a steady schedule of 12 hours on and 10 hours off produced observable fatigue.
A joint industry-labor review of 2 million train schedules found that crews who worked more than six starts in a seven-day period had a higher probability of accidents, injuries or rules violations.
While both management and union agree something needs to be done, both sides are distrustful of changing the status quo.
The railroad administration has asked Congress to grant it the same regulatory authority over railroad work rules that federal agencies have over the airlines and highway carriers.
But lobbying has stymied legislation.
The railroads fear a simple approach of limiting hours and shifts would force them to hire more crews without getting at the problem.
For each new hire, a railroad can expect to pay an additional $20,000 in fringe benefits alone, a bottom-line buster that is not ignored.
The unions don't want Congress to surrender its power over railroad work rules to an executive agency.
``They may do what's necessary today, but I want a law that cannot be changed at the whim of whoever is controlling the administration,'' said James Brunkenhoefer, legislative director for the United Transportation Union.
There are some halting steps to a negotiated solutions. Canadian National, Canadian Pacific and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers have joined in a pilot project that limits crews to work within three different 8-hour shifts and even permits them to take naps while stopped.
Conrail and Norfolk Southern are considering similar programs.
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