The practice of remotely controlling trains is coming under fire as a safety hazard as the coworker of a man who was killed by a remote-controlled train said the practice may save money but it takes lives.
Fred Anderson was a CSX railway worker who died in September of 2023 when he walked out in front of two locomotives at the company’s yard in Walbridge, Ohio. The National Transportation Safety Board released an update to its investigation on August 28, including the release of transcribed interviews with the CSX employees who were at work that day.
Since 2005, railway companies have been allowed to use remotely controlled trains in switching yards, with an engineer in one locomotive who remotely controls another. Back then, railroads hired other staff to watch for safety problems, but it has become common to have only one staffer moving the trains now.
Fred Anderson died in an accident involving two locomotives but only one driver, who was riding on a ladder that stuck out of the back of the second, rearmost locomotive, and he could not see the tracks in front of the leading locomotive. Although Anderson and a coworker, George Oliger, contacted the engineer by radio to obtain permission to walk into the work area, Anderson was still killed by the oncoming train.
Oliger said he thinks Anderson would be alive if the rules required engineers to operate only from the front locomotive, or to have an engineer stationed in the locomotive’s control cab so the tracks ahead would be visible. If the locomotive had been staffed with a conventional in-cab crew, he said, they probably would have seen Anderson and sounded the horn and bell to warn him away.
Oliger doesn’t think the extra cost for additional staff should be something that stands in the way of basic safety. He said companies should not begrudge spending “$350 to save someone’s life or make our yard a little bit safer.” Oliger would like the regulations to require two-person crews at all times.
Railroads won’t like the idea, as it’s cheaper to pay just one person, and since 2005 they’ve gotten used to the current practice and won’t want to give it up.
But regulators are paying attention and are likely to debate the current regulations. Warren Flatua, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said the FRA is taking a detailed look at the use of remote-control locomotives after Anderson’s death and other incidents in recent years.
