More than a year has passed and I cannot find the number of locomotives that were pulling the 32n on the day of the derailment.

The savings Norfolk Southern has gained by running on the knife edge, pale in comparison to the clean-up bill and cost to people of small-town America. Thanks Tie Spiker for this example of 'running the gauntlet' with people's lives and property. 🇦🇺🇺🇸👍

With their extra long trains, the railroads have total disregard for the public as they'll block crossings for sometimes an hour or longer. PSR was supposed to better serve the railroad customers. Don't let them kid you, it's to better serve the stockholders and the "bottom line" We had a saying when I worked on the railroad. "Up hill slow, down hill fast, tonnage first, safety last."

The top 3 shareholders of NS are The Vanguard Group, JPMorgan, and BlackRock. Their only care is profit at any cost.

Greedy corporate executives are the disease. Precision Scheduled Railroading is the symptom. Regulation of railroads is the cure.

About 4 years ago, my friend & I were train watching in Indiana. There was a csx freight waiting for a relief crew. The new crew climbed aboard and the dispatcher said the train was 13,000 + feet long. We heard this on the scanner. That train was almost 3 miles long! There is increased stress on equipment with long trains. So to cut down on this, railroads use a DPU. This is a "distributed Power Unit". They will cut in locomotives in the middle and end of the train as seen here. These are radio controlled from the lead locomotive. When my Dad was on the C&O the max length was 1 mile. With a 3 mile long train, they are making one train and two trainmen do the work of 6 people & 3 trains. This saves $$$$$ to the company. Long trains can be difficult to control and puts more stress on the train crew. The question is; Where was the hot box detector or defect detector which could have warned the crew of trouble thus avoiding this accident. Greed over safety.

13K feet or 15K feet are way to long. Hard to start, hard to stop, hard to keep going without breaking a knuckle. Never a siding long enough for a meet. Railroading has sucked lately because of Hunter Harrison. Providing value to the share holder, that's what it's all about. 10% not enough, we got to have 33% return or don't even try. Good video.

Union pacific is just as bad. We had a train over 2 miles long that stopped out side of town and blocked every crossing. Of we had an emergency we couldn't get fire trucks through town. Watched a BNSF coal train once in Arkansas that had 2 engines in front 4 in the middle and 3 in the rear. They had put 3 coal trains together

It's this precision schedule railroading crap that's causing so much destruction.

Even in the 70's we count the cars there were 120 box cars

I live in Salem Ohio. I work and live within a 1/2 mile of the tracks that go to East Paleinstine. I often sit at the intersection where the video showed the car on fire as it went through town. I'm feeling it for EP as it was so close to being right here. The wind has also been in our favor. I've counted cars and it's rare to not get to 100 or more. The trains are moving at a decent clip. If they ran slower at these lengths it would take forever to clear the intersections. It's a no win situation. When I stop for a train I hang back fairly far. I've noticed that when I see derailed train they don't stay on their side of the crossing gate. The funny thing is I've had people honk at me for not pulling up closer. It's not like the train is waiting on me to trip a signal. Now that I've hear there are about 1,000 derailments a year I feel even more justified.

We used those engines NS from run through to California and they sucked being in the cabs for helpers. The exhaust from the Engine builds up thru the tunnels and leak into cabs. BAD! I was on the ground trying to keep from passing out on the floor..Tehachapi is rough as it is...

Several year back, there was a derailment in Memphis Tennessee Where the track crossed Highland Ave. One block from Memphis State University, which has thousands of students. Several gondola cars turned over .Southern Ave, was blocked for hours. It did not make the news, although it was blocks away from a television station.

Just a personal observation, that when a train is pulling toxic materials the length should be limited to a small number of cars. I guess they figure that extra trains and crews are worth the cost of clean-ups and lawsuits.

Several years ago I worked for Railcrew Xpress. B.N.S.F. had some pretty long ones in Kansas. One of the conductors said he was worried about one of the trains he just got off of. He said it was way too long for his liking. Busted knuckles were common in Kansas since I spent my entire 10 hour shift several times just sitting at the crossing waiting for the repair crew from Newton to do the repair. I spent a lot of time in Dodge City waiting.

It boils down to one thing. Greed! The railroads are making record profits with less & less employees.

More dispatchers are needed I got a tour of the Union Pacific ' Harriman Center ' in Omaha , extremely lucky to get the tour . At that time I learned the dispatchers had two different subdivisions many miles apart that they worked . Very stressful jobs and I don't know how they do their job and keep their sanity . At the time I was there that was the only dispatcher center on the UP System . Something needs to be done to limit the length of trains to one mile in length . Quit intimidating train crews and treat them as humans . Yes it will take a lot more train crews but they have fired or laid off so many trainmen that could be rehired and put back to work with a little effort . For many years they have been extending sidings for longer trains that in a lot of cases the sidings are close to be extended to make double track railroads . Instead of stuffing share holders pockets spend the money on building a better running railroad . Track conditions are terrible system wide on all of the railroads , causing Slow Orders that make these long ' PSR ' trains ( don't get me started on ' PSR ' BS ) creep through cities and towns and block crossings like the train in this video . Put enough locomotives on the trains to let them run at maximum allowable speeds like they did years ago . I see very few trains running at speed now here in the Little Rock , Arkansas area . We've got mainline subdivisions coming in and out of here from northeast Arkansas , Memphis , Van Buren , Monroe , Louisiana and Texarkana . We've got the Jenks Shop that used to be heavy locomotive overhaul thats now just doing component overhauls that could be working on a lot of the hundreds of locomotives that are in storage all over the system . It's time for management to pull their over paid heads out of their a$$es and make our railroad great again before they let it go to waste and go BANKRUPT .

Reminds me of standing at Santa Fe crossing and waving at the engineer as well as the guy in the caboose, when I was young. Walked the tracks looking for railroad spikes and other interesting stuff. When I got older, waiting at a crossing in the city. Seemed really long then, but I was also in a hurry.

When I worked for the Railroad, starting on the B&O in Baltimore, ending on the BN in Denver, trains rarely exceeded 7,000 feet in total length, and they had cabooses with two well-paid people riding in them. The people would watch the train, looking for stuff that might go wrong such as sliding wheel, or burning bearings. Should they sense something wrong they could apply the train brakes in a controlled manner, the reduction in brake-pipe pressure and brake application a signal to the engineer to do the same and reduce the throttle and stop the train. A member of the crew, a brakeman or conductor, would walk to the offending piece of equipment and apply a remedy. That might be as simple as turning a valve to cut out the brakes on that car, or as time-consuming as setting that car out of the train. Then the bean-counters took over railroads, preaching an ideology called corporate culture, part of the 1980's Reaganomics neoliberal revolution. Those two pairs of eyes and the cabooses were eliminated from trains, the bean counters deciding that extra layer of safety not worth the expense. Need I speak to Precision Scheduling Railroading? When the cost to shareholder value exceeds the monetized value of such well-established methods to decrease the risk, the cost of the risk can be externalized onto the employees and the public. There was a pop musician during the 1980's named Boy George. Something of a flash, with a group called Culture Club, with the motto "If this is Culture, then give me a Club." I assume Club as a weapon. I did not know at that time, but now I know, Corporate Culture has been a weapon used against us.

WAY UNDER POWERED!! Should of had two on the point two DPU’S in the middle and one on the end. No wonder the supply chain is so bad. Steven Sipes

Did you see the video showing the camera which is part of a broken sensor not working that day of the big Derailment in Ohio? Over 1000 shunts are reported to have been found near crossings etc recently

Geebus, they were basically pulling two trains with only two engines. CSX would have probably put 3 locomotives on a train that size. That thing was a monster.

The railroads have become so greedy it’s unbelievable we need to get smarter more competent people into the management positions of these companies ASAP people who actually know and care about trains and their crews and how efficient and important they are for the economy

I've been railroading for working on 25 years (20 as engineer) and have personally had 2 mainline derailments on my district because of the way the train was built and length. Never happened before in my my time with me or any other crew prior to PSR. Luckily, no injuries to railroad personnel or the public and I was not charged with anything, surprisingly. PSR is scary...

27 MINUTES!!! Good thing there was not a fire truck or ambulance waiting at that crossing!

Where I live super long and slow, csx trains regularly cut off parts of town for more than 10 minutes. This might not sound like a big deal, but both the fire department and the rescue squad are located south of the tracks, so response time to the north of the city is significantly longer when the trains come through. This is definitely a problem.

Yes they have been getting longer for quite awhile now. Captured one in Pa. That was a 220 car mixed manifest an 2 DPUs on Sunday. Cool video

This is why PSR Sucks! If these trains keep getting longer & longer & with more Crew shortages, none of this would've happened!

By all railroads Precision Scheduled Railroading is about maintaining the bottom line by all means necessary at a profit 📈

Not only getting longer but the railroads just a few weeks ago were still asking Congress to allow 1 person crews.

After the big derailment in East Palestine some should call Norfolk Southern and ask them how that PSR working for you now.

This train is heading east to Wabash where I live, our mayor took 1/10 of the state of Indiana's 2022 transportation budget to build an overpass for this track, reason was blocked crossing. Still waiting for construction to start.

I've seen derailment and wrecks...this is a wreck.

I am nearing 80 years, I rode steam trains with my Dad. I love trains and while my spot watching is over, and my train buddy has gone to the biggest round house I am an armchair watcher. I love 1309 and it’s whistle! But over this time, GREED has made this situation and employment a danger for employees, and communities. Watching the CEO of N/S this Chap will change his practice only when the hammer of the law gets involved. For the folks who work day and night for the convenience of our economy and our whims, their labors spell big dollars. As a retired nurse my job was demanding, but these railroad employees have a bigger, harder job that we imagine or appreciate. Thanks for responding to my note to stay back from the tracks while you are filming, some of these trains are time bombs moving.

To my eyes, PSR looks like a derivative of the Japanese 5S, Six Sigma, and Just-In-Time efficiency programs. In theory, it should work just fine...in theory. Many companies learned an expensive lesson, that being that unless their business revolved around automobile manufacturing those efficiency models alienated customers, reduced effectiveness, and made life miserable for employees affected by it who were forced to put a square peg in a round hole.

I was a Carman for the L& N late 70's. Rarely did we have to change out air brake module. They performed as designed for the most part. Biggest issues were brake shoes worn out, oil pack dry (older freight cars) and roller bearing overheating. Toward the end of the 70's we were we bought out by SCL. Things began to change as operations were compromisee d by cutting manpower and management interference in our ability to insure the safety of equipment.

Mandatory cabooses on all trains over 6k. With out the eyes in the rear end it makes it the whole task of railroading a 13k foot long train impossible to predict with only two people on the head end. It’s all money and safety isn’t what’s make a rr money. Retired rr cndr here

Nothing precise about running trains like this

Anyone remember that old game show press your luck? Big bucks no whammies! Well they got a whammy! The bills always come due! You can only put off maintenance and cut staff so much before luck runs out?!? Not that they care!

NS right now is in the process of lengthening the siding at Campbellstown , OHIO. Ex PRR Richmond branch. NW bought this at CR day in 1976. This line is essential to NS. One of the few lines that connect Southern to NW. NS runs god knows how many trains a day on this line.

That train was stupid long.

Hey thanks for these vids. I'm learning alot about freight trains. Where I live we only have Amtrak and commuter lines.

Great video, great example of a train way to long operated by only two people. There used to be a law stating that railroad crossings cannot be blocked for more than fifteen minutes in case police or fire have to get from one side to the other. If the train is moving at speed they barely make that limit. If it stops then forget about. Plus the stress of having long heavy trains has to be bad on the equipment and the rails. Couplers may break at any time, bearings can self destruct at any time, axles or the flanges on the wheels can go bad or break at anytime. The railroads need to go back to a true safety first culture, spend what's needed on safety and the rest could go to the share holders...

This demonstrates the discrimination the Railroad Industry has acquired over the Trucking Industry in the prevention of the use of triple or quadruple trailers pulled by one tractor. Time for the trucking industry to be allowed to compete.

If the trains still had a caboose, the crew in it would have smelled the hotbox. The train would have been stopped safely. Technology just hasn't replaced the things that make trains safe.

if any ceo of any transportation company tells you that their main focus is safety,they are lying right to your face.the only focus of that organization is shareholder value and your government is complicit accepting money or campaign contribution's for favorable rule change to cut their cost.this will never change till politicans are held accountable along with corporations.

New a Federal regulation that puts a limit on how long a train can be. Also about mixing hazardous materials on a train and no hazardous

i would pull the cut bar on that and shut down the dpu the max train length should be 40 to 100 cars

You know that the NS is not short on power when you see there engines on different rail lines that are not there own. Steven Sipes

Just one question relating to train sizes: Are the railroads having difficulty hiring enough qualified employees to operate the number of trains required for their business volume?

For what ever they saved, they will spend sixty times more, cleaning up that village

Haven’t heard where NS has their HBD’s or DED’s in relation to E Palatine. But the long trains are moving slower so there should be time for a detector to alert and bring the train to a controlled stop. If the detectors are long distances apart or the readers are turned down to not alert at certain temp nothing was gonna prevent EP from happening.

While PSR is a problem, train length is not. Trains do have a limit on length. They have to fit within a signal block, the smallest signal block on the route. This includes stopping distance. So if a block is ket's say 5 miles, and a train is only 6,000 ft long, you're only occupying 1/5th of that block. You cannot have two trains in one block at the same time. It's still occupying 5 miles of track even though it is only 1 mile long. A 2 or 3 mile long train occupies that same block. If two 1 mile trains were used, you're now using two blocks, and most of it is empty. It is more efficient, less fuel burning, less delay, less manpower, less motive power; it's just better all around. The down side of course is longer wait times for 4 wheelers at grade crossings.

I cant imagine being stuck at the RR crossing while waiting for that thing to go by. Insane.

That's some size of train, CP trains are about the size of the train that derailed it goes to show how much DPU technology helps with train braking etc. 3 units conventional with 150 cars would have been a giant slinky.

ChainsawN&W1218, I've always liked big trains especially NS with mid and end train DPU action and the train in Palastine did not derail because of it's size because I'm sure it had atleast 1 or 2 mid helper DPUS on a 150 car train it was the hot wheel bearing which the defect detector picked up and alerted the crew and they never stopped the train it was also caught in Salem Ohio 45 minutes before the derailment on throwing sparks from the bad wheel bearing, I know the water ther is contaminated from the chemicals and vinyl chloride tank cars that were burning 🔥, I've watched this on the news since it happened I actually DVR news to catch train related news and seen today NS was writing 1000 dollar checks to all the residents so there doing there best to help out just hope no one has no health problems now or on down the road, nice video and thanks for doing coverage on the derailment!🚂🛤

Was it the TRAIN OR POOR MAINTENANCE THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEMS??

When I was hired on the Railroad in 1968 and Ret. in 2000. We had 2 Brakemen and a Conductor. In Indiana if the train was over 69 cars we had an additional Brakeman (Swingman) A total of 3 Brakeman and a Conductor plus the Engineer. With the introduction of portable radios we started to loose crew members. Later they introduced the rear of train device. It would radio brake pipe pressure, movement and if the rear light was on. That's all it did. We lost two more crew members that could watch for defects on the train. Now, they want one Engineer to safely operate these insanely long 12,000+ ft. trains. The Conductor would be chasing his train in a pickup truck.

NS 148 had been extended east to Conway in order to relieve 32N, the train that derailed was 9,300ish ft. long, it's still a damn big train but the length had nothing to do with it

The trains just keep getting longer. I have caught 3 in the past few months with over 800 axles.

I thought that they only ran trains that long out west but that is extremely long to be going through any town. Since Psr, there are more fright cars with flat spotted wheels.

Was this the same train and route?

Can anyone here tell me what the power to tonnage ratio would be for the flat route there ? HP to ton? How many horsepower were the 3 powers?

I never notice how long they are until I have to sit at a light and wait for them

wow a hour train

I spent a lot of time in Peru from 1975 to 1980...

Our government has to be stronger against bad people

To me it doesn’t make sense that all of this power from other railroads. None are short of power if they were on home rails. Steven Sipes

The FRA & Surface Transportation Board need to step in, and regulate train lengths. These 2 & 3 mile-long trains are nothing but a disaster, and a threat to public safety. PSR may look good on paper for the bottom line & profits, but in the real world, it's a public safety cluster$@&#. Not to mention it's downright dangerous for the overworked & understaffed train crews, deferred maintenance on bad-order cars, etc, etc. I've even heard about yardmasters refusing to let the crews set out bad-order cars because "they don't have time", because they want the trains to keep rolling despite the consequences, and things like the East Palestine debacle are the result of this reckless decision-making. But hey, as long as the bean counters, pencil-pushers, & shareholders are raking in the $$$$, they simply don't care about the employees or the safety of the general public. Something's gotta give, and East Palestine is just the start of more and more disasters unless something drastic changes. PSR is just horrible.

Good video

If Northfork and Southern can’t get there act together the city should CLOSE THE LINE GOING THREW TOWN. And looks like that is the case because NS just had another derailment in the same state just resently. Steven Sipes

its seen like Norfolk going under like penn central railroad

Just curious, what are you filming the day of the new Real Madrid?

150 cars isn't long by any stretch. How was that the same train? It was multi's and intermodal. 32N was/is a mixed manifest train. Similar to M363. Where it works all along it's route picking up and setting off.

I would have watched this video but there was just TO much train horns.

The US freight train system needs to be electrified and updated.

Gotta be great when an air hose or coupler breaks 2 miles behind the lead.

Its is Mikes n8rbi radio

The 258 train is the 20t. The 32n cars do not go on the 258.

Those odd lookIng vehicle carriers at 3:30 are manufactured in Mexico

20:07 that car might have been waiting at the crossing for close to an hour. Good Lord!

Good video!!!!!

I've seen mile long train before yet I have never seen an engine mid train before. And no engine on the stern...

The government needs to ban these ridiculously long trains. Blocking traffic for 20 minutes is not acceptable. Fire and ambulance need to be able to traverse. Hell... anybody needing to get to work on time cannot abide these delays. Let the railroads pay for bridges or tunnels to allow traffic to flow if they're going to block the rails for anything more than 5 minutes.

Bring back the CABOOSE so the engineer can be notified if the train is on fire DUH!

The video is a huge Dragout that got off the point. It got boring fast. Strike out on this one !!!

I'm not understanding something. If this was the train that derailed then where are all the tank cars that were clearly seen in the news photos?? I'm definitely missing something.

Why don’t you tell the length of the train? You talk about how long this and other trains our but never tell the length. I, for one would like to know and I’m sure other people would too. If you don’t want to do that, then you could at least show the whole train so the cars could be counted.

The problem is not that the train crashed the problem is somebody From the government lit it on fire That person needs to be Prosecuted and jailed

The train length had nothing to do with the derailment. A failed axle (bearing) is the culprit, length notwithstanding

It’s all about corporate greed and 45 didn’t help matters either. If management treated train crews with respect and honored their judgment on how to run trains with safety in mind, maybe they would have the qualified train crews that would keep their jobs and run shorter trains safely with the public in mind.

E Hunter Harrison Specials, Train Wrecked!!! OH, NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where are the tank cars?

Run 6 mile long train and you can have fewer trains and more safe rail roads?

Since FEBRUARY 1827 WE HAD RAILROAD TRAINS. MARCH 2023 196 year's later And they STILL CAN'T GET IT RIGHT. ( Are ROBBER BARON'S still in charge) If it WALKS AND QUAKE'S LIKE A DUCK. IT'S THE ELITE'S.

The Chinese saw this from outer space and thought it was a large military maneuver so they sent the weather balloon for a closer check. LOL

And company greed seems to win out

The narration is too quiet

Could you hear that flat spotted wheel? No wonder it derailed..

Must be fairly flat out there to run a 1x1 monster like that. I'm sure the engineer appreciated the racks on the head end tho. ...dumb