DATE: Friday, October 17, 1997              TAG: 9710170645

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: JACKSONVILLE, FLA.                LENGTH:   71 lines

BOARD REVIEWS SAFETY AT CSXT, AND NORFOLK SOUTHERN

Track and signal defects, overworked employees and a management culture that sometimes sidetracks safety to keep the trains running on time were among the problems cited by federal regulators Thursday in a report on CSX Transportation Inc.

The Federal Railroad Administration report follows a series of recent accidents, including an Amtrak derailment that injured 12 people last week in Georgia; the derailment of 34 cars, half of them containing hazardous materials, near Marianna, Fla.; and a collision between two freight trains near St. Albans, W.Va., that killed one employee and injured another.

``Safety is first,'' FRA Administrator Jolene M. Molitoris said at a news conference on the steps of CSXT headquarters in Jacksonville. ``If it's not safe, it shouldn't move.''

While acknowledging that CSXT, a subsidiary of CSX, had been the nation's safest railroad for the past three years in train-accident prevention, Molitoris said, ``When people die and people are injured, statistics have to go out the window.''

She cited a litany of problems uncovered by 75 federal and state investigators in a two-month audit of the railroad, which is based in Richmond.

The Federal Railroad Administration is also reviewing safety at Norfolk Southern Corp., a Norfolk-based railroad. An agency spokesman could not say when that review would be completed.

The agency is expected to try to make safety an issue as the federal Surface Transportation Board reviews the CSX and Norfolk Southern's plan to break up Conrail Inc. in a $10.2 billion deal.

The FRA report on CSX listed problems such as line managers often making decisions about train operations which compromised safety; extended duty days and overall fatigue of operating crews; defective power-and-hand-operated switches; sections of right-of-way with poorly maintained pole lines with excessive slack, broken poles and cross wires; overgrown vegetation; and failure to keep required records for employee injuries and illnesses.

``Every single piece of the safety puzzle has to be put together every day,'' Molitoris said at the news conference, which was attended by top-ranking CSX officials and witnessed by hundreds of CSX employees at the downtown headquarters.

CSXT has paid about $750,000 in fines for violations uncovered in the review, she said.

John W. Snow, chairman, president and chief executive officer of CSX Corp., pledged to work to make ``this railroad be the safest in the nation. A model for not just this industry, but all industry.''

A.R. ``Pete'' Carpenter, president and chief operating officer of CSXT, vowed to work for ``zero tolerance'' of injuries and derailments.

``It is a very, very realistic goal,'' he said.

Richard A. Inclima, an official with the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, said the union ``is hopefully optimistic'' about the pledge to address safety concerns.

``I think we are headed on the right track,'' he said.

Molitoris said CSXT was to be applauded in its move to fix things.

She cited the accident last week near Garden City, Ga., in which an Amtrak train hit a tractor-trailer stalled on CSX tracks despite timely calls to CSXT dispatchers in Jacksonville.

Within 12 hours of the wreck, she said, CSXT had come up with a plan to post signs at all its crossings, listing the CSX identification number of the crossing and a toll-free telephone number to call if the crossing is somehow blocked.

CSXT's 29,000 employees provide rail transportation and distribution services over an 18,500 mile network in 20 states, the District of Columbia and Ontario, Canada. KEYWORDS: NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORP. CSX TRANSPORTAION INC.

SAFETY RECORD INVESTIGATION REPORT

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu