After 15 years on the railroad I can tell you exactly what it is. It is cuts to maintenance, less people expected to do the same job in less time. We tried warning people that this would happen years ago.
This particular wreck may not have anything to do with staff cuts or reduced maintenance parameters. That isn't to say some wrecks may be happening for that reason. When I see double stacks on their side (especially if the train was stopped) the fist thing that comes to mind for me is high winds.
@@rjb5847 I mean derailments doubled during the same time period that the cuts started happening. Been watching in real time everything slowly get worse. Especially after covid. If it truly was loose wheel sets then red flags should of been raised sooner. Management actually gets mad if we find too many bad orders. Regularly told to look past a lot of stuff.
@@rjb5847 also, treating hot bearings like a nuisance rather than a priority adds to the problem as well. So many were shocked to hear the train went another 20 miles. Common occurrence for a hot bearing in my experience.
@@freedomunrestricted sometimes. In my nearly 40 years, I've seen them burn off 3 miles past a detector or as you've noted 20 miles. Trouble is, we have no idea when or how fast they'll fail. More inspections by carmen will no doubt identify some, if that happens, with PSR most traffic never goes into yards. Carmen also find other serious defects, but in reality axles & bearings are the main mechanical cause of derailments. I am also unaware of anyone treating hot beatings as anything other than a priority, maybe you can elaborate?
@@rjb5847 where I am they always seem to be treated as an annoyance. Get hit by a hot bearing detector just run them on into town another 20- miles and have mechanical look at them when we get a chance. If we told them to set it out managers or dispatchers act like we ruined their night and want to complain or second guess. Last few weeks has been different though. Hit a hot box, set it out.
@@gordonbyron5145 You just watched a video explaining how the billionaires are responsible for this. Have you ever actually talked to "half the country" regarding how much regulation they want? Perhaps don't put forth retarded regulations, and people might fucking take you seriously, instead of dismissing you outright as a clown.
@@terywetherlow7970 In my political science class, we learned about "capture" which is where the regulated industry corrupts the regulatory agency. Right? At this point, it seems like our entire government is subject to certain levels of capture.
@@terywetherlow7970 That is because all the enforcement agencies have been financially gutted by Congress. It's all a part of the Grand Design to maximize short-term profits for their corporate masters.
As someone that works derailments, this number is accurate. Yet, most derailments are simply cars walking off the track. The serious derailments we are seeing lately are NOT normal.
My dad was a railroader for 40+ years. He was an inspector, carman, machinist and tool and dye maker. He'd be rolling in his grave if he knew what happened to his beloved railroad.!
@@ironmartysharpe8293 In the Penn Central days there were far far far more injuries than now. There were far more derailments on Penn Central. At the end their tracks were horrible. Their on time performance dismal. Since Penn Central derailments and injuries are way down. Do your homework.
You got that right , Whether greed alone is involved , They put safety in last place Look what happened at Chernobyl , Major design flaws in the reactor and even though they were aware of it , The ones in charge wanted to get on with it because they were worried about their bonuses instead of safety
Those 3 things have ruined more than just the railroad business. Greed, deferred maintenance, and precision scheduling, have ruined the government, corporations, the legal system.. and pretty much everything else.. 😊
This isn't only happening in rr industry but in every aspect of our lives. Money is put ahead of our health and wellbeing. These big corporations are trash these days.
you can thank the government for taking legal bribes(lobbying) and putting corporate profits ahead of americans' safety. This is mostly republican politicians doing this, so thank them.
@CRneu it's both parties. Every other year, they switch who's in power, and still nothing changes. They're all complicit in participating. They want you to think it's one side or another.
@@joshm8661That's because by and large, by the numbers, the party who is actually trying to remove regulation is only one party. Yeah, the other one doesn't try to put regulation back or do anything to fix it after they take power, but they also don't pass the measures to deregulate. Trump is on TV cutting giant red ribbons with giant scissors and boasting about saving "billions of dollars" for rail corporations, while republicans clap and cheer. Biden is the one spending trillions on infrastructure. You can't "both sides" a problem that is propagated by one party, the facts disagree.
Especially In our healthcare industry! The pharmaceutical company's don't make money to cure or get us well. So it's all about pills to keep us I'll. As actually resolving the problem via healthy living advise or physical exercise. Neither will come out of any mouth in healthcare.
Safety is literally not an issue. The is a propaganda piece to blame it on that. The high amount of accidents as of late involving derailments, food processing plant attacks, chemical processing facilities and warehouses. Its intentional. Its part of the plan.
I recently heard from a friend who works for the city I live in who said that when there was a repair on some problematic tracks in our downtown they discovered there was a water leak below them. They simply repaired the road. They didn't address the leak because it would shut the tracks down and that portion of town down for some time as a result. It's potentially creating a washout of the ground below with a sink hole being quite possible. We recently had a sinkhole about 2 blocks away that swallowed 2 cars.
That’s crazy that they just leave it. In The Netherlands we have a problem the European badgers digging holes underneath the tracks, they closed the line to dig them out but when they almost finished they found more down the line. They are literally playing wackamole at this point.
It seem to be more the fact that the government started regulating the rail ways the more competitors left leaving only the biggest to buy up the rest and then get sloppy because who else you going to use but you blame Wall Street hahaha
It seem to be more the fact that the government started regulating the rail ways the more competitors left leaving only the biggest to buy up the rest and then get sloppy because who else you going to use but you blame Wall Street hahaha
I worked for BNSF for many years. I always inspected trains by the book. When I would report a defect to the dispatcher, he'd simply send out a buddy he had in the yard, which he had a relationship with, and his buddy would inspect the car I reported, and simply pass it . This happened all the time, in yards, on main lines ..
My granddad used to work for Southern before they merged with Norfolk. He said after that he watched the railroad nosedive. Couldn't wait to retire. Edit: Got to the part about the bearings and remembered after Granddad died we found a letter of acknowledgement from NS about how he prevented a derailment by demanding the train stop because as it passed through town he saw one of the wheels sparking. That was decades ago and they still haven't done a thing about letting the bearings run to death.
I have been a shipper of chemicals via rail since 1986. I can confirm that this consolidation and cost cutting are real, and they impact safety. No doubt about it! When it came time to purchase the property we are to retire upon soon, we chose land in a county with not one foot of track in it.
Similar has happened in the gas and electric utility industry. When management starts to become more beholden to shareholders than the safe maintenance and operation of their industry, it falls apart.
30 years in the trucking industry. Maintenance became #1. DOT in every state as we roll across the scales watch for any signs of leaky wheel seals and every other kind of leak. The difference has been amazing. Reliability is awesome in the trucking industry now a days. The problem that Reliability creates is that to many truckers have to much faith in their truck and push things to far in bad weather or fall asleep. Lack of an attention span contributes as well but that being said, trucking laws regarding Maintenance are very strict and we have come to enjoy the extra money we make not sitting in a repair facility as much. Most companies have an excellent maintenance team and it's worth it.
Oh. I know many trucking companies that make maintenance a low priority and have drivers fiddle with run and down time to put the push on tired drivers. Truckers are warriors, but still Humans. I guess when they are all replaced with a i, it'll all be solved. (Sure!)
Real. Though honestly shouldn't it also be in railroad even more Since like oil trains are like 50 trucks all connected together and operated by 2 guys Feels like a giant recipe for disaster
...And How man truck wrecks are there every year...Let keep it to a number we can comprehend How man fatal truck accidents occur every year???, Come on tell us how dangerous rail traffic is now.
Everyone BEWARE pay attention if you live by tracks don't let your kids play around where the trains could go thru your yards. Good Luck & God bless all of us. Hope.
I worked for a Japanese/German General partnership that makes bearing seals (one of largest automotive oems) . The company decided they were going to break into the railroad industry. The project was ended when the Germans and Japanese were horrified by the maintenance practices of American railroads. "Run it until the wheels fall off" (no maintenance). Versus a complicated weight x distance maintenance calculations.
They do not run them until the wheels fall off. The wheel bearings have temperature sensors on them and when they go bad, they get hot and the engineer is supposed to stop the train and call maintenance to change the bearing. And they do get routine maintenance. The mechanic repacks the wheel bearing with new grease, inspects the beating while he has it out, and changes the grease seal on a regular basis.
Family was in freight shipping and told me American ports were almost the worst in the world. Like some kind of apocalypse happened there after the industrial revolution and they never recovered or came up to date.
Union Pac train derailed next to my property in early 2020. They stacked the cars in my neighbor's field and had the track running in three days. Fixing the road crossing took a month. Cleaning up the cars took six months. One car was filled with salt that leached into the field. Nothing grows there three years later
@@Yakuzachris10 near Knapp, WI. Not sure if the neighbor took legal action but a few months after the freight cars were finally removed we saw large trucks and excavators removing and replacing earth from the spot where the salt car had been sitting (ripped open, visible to all, through winter melt, spring showers, and summer storms). No doubt it helped but that area is dead. Give it a Google, photos from the crash are wild. Freight cars piled up and sticking into the air, crazy no one was hurt
I can't link but I just watched The GrayZone's documentary on East Palestine's derailment. Same thing there, getting the track back up and running was priority number 1. Worth a watch if you'd like more information to make you angrier...
Forgot to add the video is titled "Poison and Private Police" because, unbeknownst to me, Norfolk Southern has their own police force that overrules local authority somehow.
Just like where I used to work running a printing press back in 1983. Safety, maintenance, profit sharing and employee moral was an important issue. As the years went by and the owners sons took over the business that all went by the wayside and they started cutting corners and not paying their bills and gradually ran the company into the ground. In 2018 it went belly up.
Greed, that's all it is. Companies are continually faced with only two options - either cut back on maintenance and replacement, or cut back on executive salaries and stock dividends. (And they sure aren't going to cut executive salaries.)
You as the consumer externalize your costs to live by not correcting your own issues and pass that on to the rail company. That's why we are in this situation right now. Because of nationalization of the rail roads through crippling amounts of ineffective and counterproductive regulations. There is no reason for the lack of competition between rail besides government intervention in the sector. There is no reason that the rail companies are not liable for the damage the cause during spills, besides government intervention. There is no solution to this problem other than both fully deregulating the rail industry, and abolishing the public subsidization of all roads.
You got that right , Whenever greed is involved , They put safety in last place Perhaps if one or more of their family members were killed by a train derailment or the poisonous chemicals spilled in a derailment , They may change their tune Would they start caring about safety ? That is yet to be seen
The board of directors are the greedy ones in proxy of their shareholders. CEOs obey their BoD who obey their shareholders and fire employees in masses at a whim or hint at their stock price being hurt - mostly Wall St types who trade their stock automatically in an instant at shifts in price. There is no honor amongst thieves. RIP the shareholder who held on to his investments long term.
@@jan-lukas PSR basically allows less time for carmen to check each individual car that's on a built train about to head out of the yard. I got off last night and they were checking the cars from the damn vehicle on a mile long cut of mixed freight
@@adahop7663 Neighbor of mine is an operations repair guy. He agrees with you about the ludicrously short inspection times allowed for axles, wheels, and bearings. PSR appears to be an extinction level event for the rail roading industry, because they own it all. He said that previously they spent .85 cents of every dollar earned on operations. Today it is .60 cents. They've jumped from 15% profit, to 40%!
@@adahop7663 Very rarely do I watch a train go by with a flat wheeled car…there’s usually 5 or 6 flat wheeled cars! Ba dum da dum da dum “wow, that one was bad!” BA DUM BA DUM DA DUM! “That one was REALLY bad!
I have been saying for a long time now that when a company goes public that alone creates an atmosphere within the company to direct all of it's attention to attracting stock sales and to producing a profit for share holders and not returning the needed money back into it's operations and infrastructure. A corporation that claims it is no longer profitable many times just means they can't keep the public share holders flowing in high gains so they cut corners elsewhere to shore up their stocks. In my mind it's like using your credit card or payday loans to get out of debt and kind of resembles a pyramid scheme. And then there is the grossly over paid management of which grossly doesn't begin to describe it because our language does have it's limits.
@@rjb5847 If you cut maintenance such as proper inspections and firing entire maintenance departments and refilling them with under trained workers you get East Palestine.
I got 33 trillion never paid back doll hairs on that pyramid scheme ill never be a part of... You slaves out there connecting the wrongest dots... Heres your first clue Gumps... Doing the same thing over and over again(paying sam to rape you)....Whats the rest of Einsteins definition of insanity??? Kowing the outcome(fkn 33 trillion chain slave bucks forever)and expecting another result???... You can burn them out now or later,im not the one thats insane 335million deep.... Theyve tried every label for my brand of crazy and not one stuck... You cant label integrity crazy tho... Its just man shit society dropped just like balls i never dropped that clack when i walk now... Hey,you could fix the world if you knew better,now you do... Your scams and schemes youve funded and turned against us all.. At some point youll be at my bottom line,since youve started seeing the truth... Lets see how your pride does here,because most people only claim to be good,then their actions prove they were always trash...33 trillion reasons why their labels fit 335 taxtarded slaves,and will never fit this grown ass man... Ive proven your insanity by defintion,ive been to official places where ive seen it... Im watching you live it yourselves fully paid up and fully tf in denial(probaly hating any one of the other only party in a 6 party system,and buying those tarded wedges).... That one is the only one any of you fks could maybe argue a little,so i dont a reply back from any of your self made whiner asses... KEEP IT GUMPY 🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑
When I hired out on the Railroad in 1968. We had 5 crew members on Road freight train. Three crew members on a locomotive and 2 members in the Caboose. When I retired in 2001 we were down to 2 crew members and no Cabooses. Now, these class 1 railroads are still pushing for 1 crewman only on the locomotive. Trains nowadays can exceed 2 miles long. It's impossible for 2 crew members to watch their insanely long trains for defects.
Was out for a walk when I discovered that the metal-framed concrete section of sidewalk inside the tracks was broken, and a piece of the metal was shoved up against the track and had clearly been driven over by a train. Thankfully, police rolled up, stopped, and started talking on the phone. Later, railroad personnel showed up. Next walk, that section was replaced by wooden ties placed lengthwise within the tracks. Even if it gets messed up like before, the wood will simply break away. Feels much safer now.
Norfolk Southern came up with a modernized version of brake operation and bearing monitoring. *_They then lobbied against it when it was going to be regulated as a requirement!_* They externalize their costs to do business by not correcting their own issues and pass that on to the public. We all pay to fix their mistakes.
They didn't actually come up with modernized version. ECP brakes were developed some time ago, and mandated by a specific date. The cost of implementing PTC was also affecting railways and it was found that it would be impossible to implement on the original timeline. NS lobbied against the implementation date. While ECP brakes are more effective, they would have mattered little in East Palestine. In addition distributed power has increased the effectiveness of existing air (& dynamic) brakes. The implementation date ECP braking had to be in place is not as big a deal safety wise as other factors.
That's absurd. You as the consumer externalize your costs to live by not correcting your own issues and pass that on to the rail company. That's why we are in this situation right now. Because of nationalization of the rail roads through crippling amounts of ineffective and counterproductive regulations. There is no reason for the lack of competition between rail besides government intervention in the sector. There is no reason that the rail companies are not liable for the damage the cause during spills, besides government intervention. There is no solution to this problem other than both fully deregulating the rail industry, and abolishing the public subsidization of all roads.
It's not just the railroads. It's the entire petrochemical industry. The INEOS plant in Pasadena Texas had an explosion and fire occur today. INEOS produces polyethylene vinyl. According to what the city has stated in press releases, everything is okay and no need to worry about pollution (plus the obligatory thoughts and prayers to the injured) but no body from INEOS has come forward with a statement about what occurred. Furthermore, the Harris County pollution investigators are only testing north of the incident and not a full radius around the site.
The PFAS from this incident that is emitted into people's bodies, are a great way to boost future medical and big Pharma profits. Poor people are the bottom of the food chain. Let Jesus save you.
It's not just the railroads or petrochemical industry. It's the whole (western) world. Only when the last river is poisoned, the last animal dead, the last tree burned down, the last community or family broken because of money and greed, will we realize that we cant eat or breath money, that good and bad is in ourselves and how we behave and treat others and that the illusion that everybody is isolated and we are disconnected from the people around us is wrong and we are dragging ourselves into the abyss.
A year or two ago a train derailed on my street right near my house. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness, but this subject hits a little close to home after that. I don’t mind the 10-20 trains a day deafening the air with their horns and screechy wheels, but it is sad that even safety checks are too much to ask these days.
Countries like Japan or Germany have high speed rails that don't experience the same amount of breakdown as the trains in the USA. Corporations call it 'regulation' or 'de-regulation' but let's be real... it's not regulation, it's protection. It's not de-regulation, it's removing checks and balances that make it safe for everyone else so they can pocket more money.
thats just un regulated capitalism. Dude if you just look at the basic idea of capitalsim and how it gets perverted because of greed. Capitalism is the pursuit of money at any cost and is inherently linked to greed its just natural. Anyone who gets to the top of a huge company like that is inherently the most greedy and willing to do anything to get to the top. So its normal that without a change in thinking, from the bottom line to providing a good service and balancing that with profit.....nothing will change. Just look at all the other industries, big beef, all the agricultural industires, the car industry, all our manufacturing is outside.....
There really is no such thing as deregulation. It is more about who gets to set the rules and who is held accountable. We have left industries to "self regulate" and have let industrial interests capture regulatory agencies to work in the industry's favor. A prime example is regulatory capture of the FAA and the Boeing 737 Max disaster.
We had rebar and tons of bad metal on one of the rail crossing near a factory plant were I lived. It both destroyed wheels and I'm sure if not enough people complained about it, it would have caused a derailment at some point since it took them five plus years to fix or even to address. Maybe this isn't as big as what I'm making it to be but I've never heard of so many derailments in my life until now.
That's what's really going on. To blatantly avoid maintenance when you're spilling chemicals every where isn't coincidence. If you make it seem normal, no one will notice it's being done on purpose.
Stop... They literally explained the whole thing in the video and you people are still like "No, no, it's the boogie man!". Not everything is a conspiracy. This, like so much that is wrong in this country, boils down to corporate greed. It's the corporations' drive to maximize profits at all costs.
Ban stock buybacks. Take away the tax incentives for these hedge funds to own the railroads (and other vulture endeavors). Take away their 15% loophole for paying taxes
I live near a railroad track. It's not used to much nowadays. But just the other day I drove by a staging area and I saw 3 carts flipped on their sides and grains that were in the carts were spilled all over the place.. kinda strange!
I follow permaculturist Mark Shepard, who wrote Restoration Agriculture. He said the corporate freight monopoly is a problem for small farmers as cars are rented up to 20 years in advance and small farmers are often effectively locked out from a way to affordably ship food. This needs to change. We need more freight and passenger rail, and more localization, as opposed to globalization, which is pushed by globalist elitists.
Way too late to change a thing. Folks shoulda shut the tv off and verified the legalized (in 1986, right?) poopaganda. Just like ch -- only the ch citizens KNOW, and ummmericans remain largely...cluelessly Trusting .
we need less rail. there is no railroad that exist without government intervention. trucking is the only way to break the globalist stranglehold that is rail
Two words: negative externalities Basically, shifting private costs onto the community (Norfolk increased dividends and bought back $10B worth of their stock last year instead of responsibly spend money to upgrade their technology and bring back their workforce to increase safety standards). Isn't it ironic how Republicans talk about responsibility and then hate to be responsible for internalizing the cost of their business?
Yes. Greed has infected our world and is destroying it. The love of money is the root of all evil. The corrupt are running these countries and lying to us. These greedy, hypocrites can never be trusted. Devoid of integrity. Our world is upside down and people are wack. I look up trusting and focusing on God. Walk by Faith. Not by sight. 😊
Come on now.. its 2023... two sides of the same coin. You. We've known for awhile what the Republicans were about, but you have to to be real deal delusional to not see the madness in the democratic party.. There are three other parties. Independents, green party, and libertarian
Isn’t it also ironic how once democrats are in office and have total control of the federal government, they STILL fail to correct any of these issues. It’s almost as if they don’t want to. Hey - wait a second! They’re exactly the same! Wake up time!!!
The latest merger referenced in this video was under a Democratic administration. The problem is government in general. The point of fingers to a specific party is nothing more than a smoke screen. Both are to blame.
I drive truck and I saw one in tehachapi recently and it wasn't all over the news or nothing, but it was all up in the canyon. Your video was well done and these movements of products are very important. Some things shouldn't change..
One thing you pointed to is what they call the axle bearing or as it is technically known as CTRB bearing; caged taper roller bearing. I’ve looked in depth about these bearings. A lot of what I’m going to say is my own opinion. First let’s go back to the days of steam engines and rail cars that had the old style grease box bearing assembly on the trunion frame assembly, the same trunion frame design still in use today. In the days of steam locomotives could only go so far then the crews would stop to put on coal/oil and water. At that time they would grease the locomotive drive component’s with pneumatic grease guns and check the grease box on every axle just by lifting the door on the box and looking in to see the grease levels and add additional grease when needed; quick and easy. Then with the introduction of diesel electric locomotives in the late 30’S that had CTRB bearings on the traction motor/trunion assemblies the locomotives could go on for thousands of miles with no maintenance. But what about the grease box bearings on the rail cars-oops now we have a problem. I don’t know who came up with the original solution, probably a bearing manufacturer. The solution was and still is the CTRB bearing assembly that was designed to fit existing rail car axle design in that old cars with the grease box bearing could have the hole axle assembly switched out and a new axle assembly installed that fit right into the trunion frame assembly and all new rail cars coming off the production line would have the new no-serviceable CTRB as original equipment, that solved a lot off problems but created new problems. The CTRB bearing has a estimated service life before it’s considered scrap and that’s well understood by the bearing manufacturers . But what 2 main variables is internal degradation of the grease going bad-drying out and internal parts of the bearing in the form of metal chips that get into the grease that cannot be seen by visual inspection. Second is the outer seal failure and grease coming out of the bearing. The only way to do a proper bearing inspection is you have to use a hydraulic press to pull the bearing off the axle because the wheel and bearing assemblies are hydraulically pressed on to the axle under vary high tonnage loads. This means pulling the car out of service and lifting the rail car and swapping out each axle assembly and installing new ones then running to others through a rebuild process. One thing the RR’s are doing is over the decades, installing equipment defects detectors hoping to catch hot bearings and side line the car on a siding have a crew come out with special equipment to lift the car and replace the suspect axle assembly then send it on its way. Well sometimes they might not stop the train in time. You’ve got around 28,000lbs or 14 tons per bearing assembly load on a fully loaded car, let’s say a 30,000 gallon capacity car. When that bearing goes over the max operating temperature that I’ve found out is 150 degrees Fahrenheit and is in the 250 degree range you don’t have much time to get that Train stopped. As said in the video and it’s this is my opinion that they are not doing a proper job of axle bearing preventive maintenance and inspection on these CTRB bearings.
In this instance, the bearing was on fire for at least 20 miles as it was captured on video passing through the previous town. I worked for a specialty vehicle manufacturer eventually ending up in the warranty department. Customer would call and say one thing but that is not what happened. Many times they knew something was goofy and drove it to destruction anyway. The reason RR are getting away with driving it to destruction is the cost of doing so is not prohibitive enough to not drive it to destruction. I don't know if 1,700 derailments a year is too many but is the accepted cost of doing business. I will say one derailment of a constructed chemical weapon of mass destruction that contaminates air, drinking water and farm land is one too many. What happened in East Palestine was negligence on orders of magnitude. Not so much from a wheel bearing failure as that seems the accepted cost of business but totally negligent to string all those chemicals onto one train then send it down the tracks knowing a derail would be catastrophic event. If they didn't know it would be a catastrophic event that it is even more negligent. There needs a major attitude adjustment as it's an intolerable position to accept derails and the assembling of chemical weapons of mass destruction. I also worked in Environmental, Health & Safety. Never would that be accepted policy under my supervision. It was my job (ass) to protect the company by preventing the company and it's employees from doing stupid things and they did stupid things. A manufacturer does not need all 115k gallons of chemical be delivered in one day. That delivery schedule may be convenient for the RR but it makes a chemical weapon of mass destruction. Stop that kind of stupidity with fines so severe they stop doing it.
Ok! Longest comment I've ever seen on TH-cam, congratulations. FYI, I am not going to read it. If you want people to read it, you should cut that at least in half
@@yvetteandjorgenlarsen9753: Okay, it may be the longest post / comment you have seen on YT, but, some posts are not able to be edited and keep all of the required information. Historical information, plus comparison to modern day operations, combined with solutions is pertinent to the discussion.
@@billbirch3748 i agree with you but there are other narratives that drive this. I’m retired out of the automotive/industrial transportation business. And starting I’d say in the 60’s was and is none serviceable bearings and U-joints that cannot be greased and the only way is to use-operate till they fail. Now on semi trucks all the axle tapered bearings at all axle points are in one way or another lubed by 90wt gear oil and if the oil is clean they will go a million miles. The only issue is a seal failure. If a deteriorating seal is caught in time all you have to do is R&R the seal and reuse the bearings. I’ve got a 77 Buick that’s been in the family for 40 years-daily driver. I had to replace the U-joints 30 years ago because from the factory they where none serviceable , grease dried up. I installed grease able U-joints and they are still in their. I’ve got 200k on them. I grease the car at every oil change. Then another issue is the railroad cars are spec out to haul a dedicated commodity. So to cut down the amount of gallons hauled per car you need more cars to haul the same amount of product. Then they dead head the cars back to the manufacturer of the product. Then to properly inspect the bearings on all axles requires taking the car out of service which means downtime and lost revenue. The bottom line is risk management and money.
5 member crew in 1956. Fireman, Brakemen, Engineer, Conductor and Rear trainmen. 3,200 tons 76 cars and caboose. 12 hours rest. Now 2 member crew, RR's wants 1 man crew. I guess this helps RR Mgt bottom line. PSR (Precision Scheduled Railroading) ,4,100 tons 125 cars trains, rest when they tell you, no time off.
Not quite. 10-12,000 tons and 150-200 cars under current PSR operating plans. 2 man (trying for 1) crews. 6 day work weeks (then 48 hours off) 10 hours rest between work assignments that start or end at any hour, day or night. Begin at your home terminal, go to the away from home terminal, sleep in a hotel, start back after 10 hours rest or maybe not for 40-50 hours before they need you again so just wait. Don't call us, we'll call you. Horrible lifestyle. Worked far too much, missed a lot of my families life.
The situation faced by rail workers with understaffing, nickel and diming of greedy management, poor working conditions, etc reminds me SO much of what it is like working as a nurse in healthcare. Nursing homes and then hospitals are very much operating under the same flawed model. There needs to be money taken away from management and administration "fluff" jobs, and put into having REAL people doing the real work on the ground level. There are huge negative consequences for both our society doesn't need.
That bridge that woman was yelling from is Corizo Gorge and it is no longer used, it is the biggest wooden Tressle in the world though. That line was last used in 2012, runs from Tijuana, Mexico to Plaster City, California.
@@michaelsnyder8488 Yes, I believe they are one in the same. It was called the Impossible railroad because they had to blast through all kinds of rock to do it. It's really a work of art.
1.700 Derailments per year, and that´s "only" for freight trains? That´s absolutely insane, at least since 2010 (couldn´t find older Data easily) the entire EU combined reported between 70 and just over 100 derailments per year, and that´s AFAIK for passenger and freight combined.
I know the airlines are .................. why I don't fly so now I won't ever have a train ride except if still at Griffith Park Observatory. Two people per car, grown ups yes. Very fun & safe, no other train, car or people traffic none. A great train ride. Fun.
He said the maintenance costs a little extra money but it doesn’t! If you look at how much more profit they are seeing, the cost is negligible. They simply don’t care.
The fact that railroads cut crews, servicing, and lines is because of a thing by the name of precision scheduled railroading started to streamline American railroads which caused them to make trains longer and run crews for longer hours reduce equipment servicing all in a scheme to improve railroads when it has actually caused more derailments strikes and worse working conditions for crews
If a company is posting record profits, they shouldn't be getting tax breaks, especially if they're poisoning and killing towns the way these railroads have done. Additionally, any fines should be a percent of the business' gross income (NOT their profits; all it takes is a bit of accounting to legally come out with record gross income and no official profits).
I've never seen a place so absolutely saturated and ruined by corporate greed. From the very dirt underneath the pavement, to everything above it, everything is just forsaken for the sake of money. It's destroyed all my optimism towards the future, and I'm barely in my twenties.
interesting to note the differences in the hotbox detectors between railroads, in particular the information given after a train has passed the detector
I have been a railroad worker for decades and you are just starting to scratch the surface of how bad things are/have gotten. Good luck everyone!!! Money runs the railroads.
The solution is not necessarily more regulation or deregulation, its targeted regulation. Start with damages. If there's a derailment, like in E Palestine, then they are responsible for the costs of making people whole. That means the cleanup costs, property depreciation, all of it. That will make maintaining their equipment MORE COST EFFECTIVE and incentivize them to also look at the railbed and call out THE GOVERNMENT that has FAILED TO INVEST AND MAINTAIN it.
I live in London Ontario and the train in this city and all its cargo rails run directly thru the center of our city and along a major river (Thames River) that leads right to the great lakes at a massive risk to the environment. After Ohio and several videos like your awesome one here, I'm convinced were extremely lucky and very stupid to have allowed our rail infrastructure to be built in this way and not had a major disaster here yet. As of this year 2023 our city FINALLY has started to make plans to make heavy cargo routes around the city instead of thru and they lowered the speed limit thru town as well, I'm very glad you and many others have brought attention to this very deadly topic, it's saving lives! Greed and transportation have never been a good mix, Thank you. 👍👍
The report for East Palestine, Ohio said the track was well maintained. Though very reliable, bearings do occasionally fail. Like automobiles, they pick the time and place to fail. What might be problematic is empty railcars that have a low tare weight placed in the middle of a train. An light unloaded flat car surrounded by heavy tank and hopper cars may jump the track easier than a string of full, heavy tank cars. As for the bridge, if it is in sound condition, there is no need to replace it. Many bridges are pretty old but they are still sound.
THISHAS BEEN PROVEN TOO MANY TIMES!IT IS A FACT!IF YOU PUT AN EMPTY FLATCAR IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRAIN CARRYING HEAVY, LOADED TANKCARSAND LOADED HOPPERCARS, THAT FLATCAR WILL CAUSE A TRAIN TO DERAIL, CAUSING DEADLY DERAILMENTS!IN MODEL RAILROADING, MY FREIGHT CARS DERAILED WHEN I HAD LIGHTWEIGHT FREIGHTCARS THAT WAS EMPTY THIS IS A FACT!THE TRAIN WILL DERAIL EVERY TIME! AND THIS IS WHATS DANGEROUS ABOUT THESE TRAINS!
Exactly. What ive been saying. Empty carts, that got unloaded halfway through and didnt get removed or reloaded. Back pressure rising it up or a grade when the train brakes.. Poor rail maintenance. High speeds. All factors.
While it is true that bearings can fail at any time, it is still no excuse to be running a car where there is obvious damage to the bearing. It would be like driving your car when you know the rotors and pads on your brakes are overdue for replacement.
@@AQuietNight By "obvious", I'm of course including bearings that were inspected and found to be worn to where they are at high risk of failure, but the company kept the car in service over the objections of the inspector. There is NO excuse for this. It would be like taking your car in for a state inspection, the mechanic notes that your brake pads are close to failure, and you drive off without getting them replaced and without passing the inspection. So now you're driving with an expired inspection, your brakes fail, you cause an accident, and you try to claim innocence because "there was no way to know my brakes would fail". This is what the railroad companies are doing, every day of the year.
I remembered that wood trestle that carried the old Southern Pacific Railroad from San Diego to Niland, California. They didn't run long trains on that route because there was a lot of steep grades and it cut through the mountains of Southern California and Mexico through the desert through El Centro and connects to the main line at Niland. Doesn't run into Mexico anymore and that line was sold to a short line railroad around 1980. Now the San Diego Trolley
There was a railroad line that used to run through parts of the city I live in now, which ran right behind my late grandfather's old home. It was shut down years ago, and most of the path was turned in to walking trails, but a lot of it down the line is still there.
What would also be nice is if government bought out the rails themselves, as well as a big push for new freight and passenger rail. The railroads companies can still be private.
🚨 Hedge funds SHOULD BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL CLEANUPS OF THEIR DISASTERS! THE RAIL SYSTEM SHOULD BE APART OF STATE INFRASTRUCTURES NOT IN THE HANDS OF HEDGE FUND OWNERS OR FOREIGN NATIONS OR ENTITIES!
The reason disasters are piling up is the unrelenting chase for profits at any cost, especially the human cost paid by the poor and middle class for the powers to be not controlling natural events, and exaggerating their negative impact by neglect.
You as the consumer externalize your costs to live by not correcting your own issues and pass that on to the rail company. That's why we are in this situation right now. Because of nationalization of the rail roads through crippling amounts of ineffective and counterproductive regulations. There is no reason for the lack of competition between rail besides government intervention in the sector. There is no reason that the rail companies are not liable for the damage the cause during spills, besides government intervention. There is no solution to this problem other than both fully deregulating the rail industry, and abolishing the public subsidization of all roads.
I am horrified to hear these facts because my house and property sits about 400 feet or less from a CSX railroad tracks. Every day they haul very short trains maybe 4 or 5 box cars and 2 or 3 chemical cars back and forth through our neighborhood. Since the derailment in Ohio I have noticed that the trains going through seem to be going a lot slower than they used to. And the tracks are up on a hill so if the train were to derail I can just imagine them roll off the tracks hitting my house and spilling those chemicals everywhere. I am retired now so god help me because I am home a lot more than I used to be when I worked.
I am right there with you. I live 600 ft from the tracks and I also live 9 miles north of where the recent Glendale, KY derailment happened. So this is something that is on my mind quite often, every time I hear the train horns blowing I just hope it stays on the tracks.
@@rjb5847 "Train derailments in the United States are relatively common, with an average of 54,539 derailments between 1990 and 2021 and 1,704 per year in 2023 according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS)". Hope that helps
@@rona4960 You're welcome. I'm quite happy to outline my nearly 40 yrs experience in the industry, including operating trains, investigating accidents, working on committees with federal regulators & accident investigators etc...if you need clarification
It's because railroad workers are unionized and the company can't exploit them as much as they can other kinds of employees. So they just understaff and ignore safety.
@@b_uppy The reason Amtrak sucks is because they're underfunded and they mostly run on tracks owned by freight railroads who prioritize their own trains over Amtrak's passenger trains.
@@IBeforeAExceptAfterK That's merely another component of why Amtrak sucks, and it comes from government protectionism of large corporations and deprioritizing of passenger rail...
@@b_uppy non sense. Amtrack’s biggest problem is that it is a public service thats being ran as a private corporation. There is no way a private railroad could make a profit serving small towns Amtrack does. Britain tried and its been a failure. So much so the UK has been force to scrap the franchising model that existed purely to insure towns across england got service. Many smaller towns have been abandoned in Japan, in-fact some prefecture governments had to step in to make sure towns were getting service and some prefectures like Hokkaido renationalized. As for freight rail private companies has repeatedly failed to invest in the long term sustainability and survivability of the industry, we’ve given it too many chances. Its time to hold the industry accountable. Private companies no longer have foresight, in this age of stock market capitalism the only people holding Class I railroads accountable are stockholders.
They have always derail a lot, but it usually doesn't get reported beyond local news. A few years back a train had a massive derailment in Wellington, Ohio. No news coverage outside the Cleveland metro area. The train spilled thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, came with in 5 feet of smashing into a factory full of people, destroyed a rail crossing cutting a street in half, and put at threat the neighborhood on the opposite side of the tracks.
The reason that wasn't national news was that the train was carrying construction materials and produce. I mean, some rocks, styrofoam and onions aren't really a major threat to a neighborhood, and the train was slowing down as it entered the area so it's not like the cars were in danger of hopping off and careening through a home at 60mph.. No, the real reason it wasn't national news is the same reason the derailments are happening in the first place: news is a for-profit business, and a no injuries/threat event means no opportunity to sensationalize the event and drive up viewership.
It happens because they don't care about safety anymore, just the almighty dollar instead. They need to police the railroads like they do the trucking industry!
It is interesting that positive train control (PTC) was forced on railroads to "improve safety" and yet they are becoming less safe; and this at a time when train miles are down!
They build loop holes in the law when written and the republicans vote down all regulations to control some of this greed & corruption but some don't get the message on why regulations where voted in by the people in the first place. Sad.
The railroad industry is one more example in America of shareholder value and profit being priority one, and all other concerns are priority non-existent. Another example is Southwest Airlines. The disaster of this recent Christmas was in part due to a scheduling system that hasn't been updated since the 90s!
How do we fix it? My first thought - not given it much thought - was to more heavily tax shareholders on earnings when their profits come from companies whose profits exceed the average for that industry. Take a random company, NFS let's say made 30% while average was 15% because more layoffs and cost cutting than average. Tax the hell out of NFS shareholders some ungodly amount ... in repayment for their crying to their board of directors all year for demanding more more more profits and EPS.
@@thebluelunarmonkey tax the wealthy again. The tax rate on the top 1% prior to JFK was a whopping 90%!!! People who lived during the Depression and prior did this intentionally to stop greedy monopolies and billionaires from having more control than regular people. They knew what deregulation and greed does. But boomers got greedy and voted for conservatives like Reagan that bumped that top 1% tax rate down into the 30s, removed all those regulations written in blood by those who witnessed disasters, and made it borderline criminal to be poor and intentionally widened the wealth gap to benefit the boomers who had an easy time starting large companies after their parents risked hell to make America great. They sabotaged the country to make themselves rich while making it damn near impossible for future generations to live as well as they did. This shit is extremely fixable, but absolutely nobody wants to admit that a few decisions in the 1970s-1990s lead to what you see today. Trains derailing is only a result. Fixing train regulations is only a band aid fix until the US goes back to punishing being filthy rich and focuses on preventing accidents as opposed to paying it in court and moving on. Big government became a thing to protect the little guy, not shield rich bastards from scrutiny. Conservatives who want to protect rich people and strike down regulations and focus solely on profit are anti-American.
Train wheels flanges are essential to help keep the train on the track. But yet they are too small. 1" of wheel lift is all it takes for a wheel to come off the rail; especial on a curve. Make the flanges a bit longer and I guarantee you there will be less derailments.
Train crews do not typically or intentionally speed. The train you saw was not likely moving "dangerously fast", as speeds are strictly mandated by engineering specs as well as operating rules. If trains started moving at higher speeds in your area, it would be because infrastructure has been improved and/or equipment is being used that is rated for higher speeds.
I have a friend who works for the railroad and I asked him why the engines on the back of the train. He said that they are pusher engines for really long trains and they found out the hard way with derailments that you cannot have any empty cars in the string when using pusher engines because they pop up off the track. All cars must be fully loaded.
I am 15 miles SE of Elgin IL. They can blame the previous Party in charge, fine. The current Party in charge has had over two years to correct things if regulations are bad yet they didn't even acknowledge East Palestine Ohio. Politics aside, C'mon man!
If every time there was a train derailment, no matter how small, the company was fined a minimum of $10 Million plus clean up costs we would see how fast derailments stopped happening.
You understand they are working with very heavy equipment in an imperfect and weather worn environment, right? Derailments will NEVER go away. This obsession with thinking there will be zero derailments is ridiculous. Technology and safety improvements have reduced the amount of both FRA and non-FRA reportable derailments significantly even just in my 24 year career.
No you wouldn't. That might sound good, but it would mean the end of rail companies and an astronomical increase in the cost of consumer goods as well as huge increase in environmental degradation. In most cases small derailment pose no risks and are a result of human error.
@@TheNemosdaddy . Didn't the man interviewed in this clip say that cars with dry or damaged wheel bearings are sent on their way or did I miss something? There should be zero bad bearings getting by, they have detectors! We're dealing with big machines carrying dangerous chemicals. Someday there'll be enough spills that there will be little uncontaminated land and streams left.
RRs would be out of business in a year or two and the economy would shut down and we'd be starving. Sounds great, let's do some knee-jerk legislating!!
Maybe the track is being cut. The "Break" in Sacramento does not look like a break, it looks torched. So the tracks in Minnesota and Ohio are out in the middle of nowhere, where anyone could drive up to the track at 2:00 am and begin cutting without anyone knowing.
You didn’t touch upon the military rely on the train network to move tanks and troops etc. How much of these hedge funds are owned by offshore people/companies/CCP ?
When I was driving truck I drove one with a grease reservoir on the back of the cab that I could grease all the non-rotating chassis lube points, every day, simply by turning the crank on top of the reservoir...why can't they do something like that for railcar bearings?
As a truck driver, you’re responsible for the condition of your truck every time you drive it. A train crew does little to no preventative maintenance themselves. Their primary concern is making sure that freight gets there with as little downtime as possible. If something fails on your truck, you are likely to get hurt. On a train, unless there is a mechanical issue with the locomotives, it’s likely that a derailment won’t impact the crew at all as far as injuries. So what if the 35-42 car in a train derails, you’re safe.
My small town has a branch line passing through it. Even though there will be days where no trains pass by at all, trains are pretty common. The line passes right by the high school and if a derailment were to happen, the cost will be heavy
I still don’t understand how a company could possibly make more money by not doing proper maintenance to prevent what seems like a much more costly accident. I wish there was a mathematical breakdown of how the actually make more money this way. It seems so counterintuitive.
I guess because it cost money to do enough maintenance to keep it in top shape rather than fixing when it breaks, after all there are very little consequences when something does happen.
@@josealfonsocontretas5724 wow. Maybe that’s the problem, that there’s not enough consequences. Fines need to be imposed that would make it financially advantageous to actually do the maintenance then. Still very hard to understand how the maintenance costs could be more than the costs involved in a derailment.
Of course it's sickening and the average person is too weary to do anything about it. It's called money in politics. With minor exceptions it owns and controls our congress.
WE THE PEOPLE need to have a "board" and looking over their shoulders, making sure not one dry bearing sneaks through. The government is usually overzealous about safety (or used to be), now they're letting bad bearings pass, knew this before trains derail, and people are limited on the extent they can sue?
And redefine what a monopoly is. A few corporations are dominating practically every aspect of our lives, it's a variation of the monopoly problem. It's like the song verse 'I owe my soul to the company store'...
The obvious solution: Nationalize the tracks, and treat them as the critical infrastructure they are. Would help fix the atrocious state of passenger rail too, since those trains often get delayed by freight trains and the pathetic state the tracks are in. Also safety regulations need to exist, and be enforced. A town destroyed because a multi-billion-dollar corporation can't grease a ball bearing?! The entire management chain that allowed this to happen needs to be locked up for a long time, starting at the very top.
There's a reason why most rail infrastructure around the world is state owned (even if there are private companies operating on those tracks). Can you imagine if your local highway was owned by walmart? it's ridiculous.
Great idea--let the govt alphabet agencies run the rial roads, just like the mails, the DMVs, the interstate highways--all pinnacles of efficiency and service. Grow up.
The tracks aren't in a "pathetic state". You understand the FRA has standards that must be followed and maintained for the speed a class 1 wants for a particular section of track, right? Each class 1 railroad literally spends billions each year JUST in maintenance. Could most class 1 rail yards use some maintenance? Sure, most of those are limited to 15 mph or less and the derailments are relatively minor. You think railroads WANT derailments? You should see what they spend per year JUST on railroad contractors alone.
It may be an obvious solution, but the fact is that track related issues are not the primary cause of derailments. That notion was propagated in this video but is untrue.
@@TheNemosdaddy I take it you haven't been on a TGV, or a Shinkansen, or even an average commuter train in a European country that actually invests in rail infrastructure... The slow-motion bumpy-ass ride of passenger trains here in the States is medieval in comparison.
My town of Chesterton, Indiana has 78 freight trains going through town DAILY. I live about a block from the tracks. Thinking of moving as this red state is very unconcerned.
Really could never understand why so many US towns are built on and around freight railways, in many cases with them literally running down main street.
The last car on a train near my town derailed. The man in his car parked "safely" behind the large arm was killed instantly. I have always wondered how that happened..
The state of repair for the mechanical and maintenance of way of the the railroads is easily explained by the three little letters R - I - F: reduction in force.
Very interesting and INFORMATIVE ! GOOD JOB = WELL DONE! of digging into it and finding out things! That most people don't know and have no idea about! Thank You!!.
2:38 less competition = worse service. 2:53 100+ Class 1 RRs > 7 > now 6 3:05 largely under hedge fund control ☹️😡 3:32 shareholder payouts up dramatically; accidents also up. 3:49 anonymous railcar inspector describes situation 4:46 used to quickly remove damaged cars from service 5:18 triple-whammy against rail safety: consolidation, deregulation, greedy hedge fund control 6:06 San Diego County Goat Canyon Trestle largest wooden trestle in the world
After 15 years on the railroad I can tell you exactly what it is. It is cuts to maintenance, less people expected to do the same job in less time. We tried warning people that this would happen years ago.
This particular wreck may not have anything to do with staff cuts or reduced maintenance parameters. That isn't to say some wrecks may be happening for that reason. When I see double stacks on their side (especially if the train was stopped) the fist thing that comes to mind for me is high winds.
@@rjb5847 I mean derailments doubled during the same time period that the cuts started happening. Been watching in real time everything slowly get worse. Especially after covid. If it truly was loose wheel sets then red flags should of been raised sooner. Management actually gets mad if we find too many bad orders. Regularly told to look past a lot of stuff.
@@rjb5847 also, treating hot bearings like a nuisance rather than a priority adds to the problem as well. So many were shocked to hear the train went another 20 miles. Common occurrence for a hot bearing in my experience.
@@freedomunrestricted sometimes. In my nearly 40 years, I've seen them burn off 3 miles past a detector or as you've noted 20 miles. Trouble is, we have no idea when or how fast they'll fail. More inspections by carmen will no doubt identify some, if that happens, with PSR most traffic never goes into yards. Carmen also find other serious defects, but in reality axles & bearings are the main mechanical cause of derailments. I am also unaware of anyone treating hot beatings as anything other than a priority, maybe you can elaborate?
@@rjb5847 where I am they always seem to be treated as an annoyance. Get hit by a hot bearing detector just run them on into town another 20- miles and have mechanical look at them when we get a chance. If we told them to set it out managers or dispatchers act like we ruined their night and want to complain or second guess. Last few weeks has been different though. Hit a hot box, set it out.
I’ve worked in the petroleum industry all my life and one thing I’ve learned is that maintenance is key to safety!
Maintenance wont be done unless forced by regulations. Half the country wants 0 regulations.
@@gordonbyron5145 Nobody enforces the ones already on the books.
@@gordonbyron5145 You just watched a video explaining how the billionaires are responsible for this. Have you ever actually talked to "half the country" regarding how much regulation they want? Perhaps don't put forth retarded regulations, and people might fucking take you seriously, instead of dismissing you outright as a clown.
@@terywetherlow7970
In my political science class, we learned about "capture" which is where the regulated industry corrupts the regulatory agency.
Right?
At this point, it seems like our entire government is subject to certain levels of capture.
@@terywetherlow7970 That is because all the enforcement agencies have been financially gutted by Congress. It's all a part of the Grand Design to maximize short-term profits for their corporate masters.
As someone that works derailments, this number is accurate. Yet, most derailments are simply cars walking off the track. The serious derailments we are seeing lately are NOT normal.
So, can you really derail a train laying a 2X4 or a log across the tracks?
That was always a subject that came up with high school geek friends.
💯👍
It's not normal, nor is it accidental.
When you know how something needs, to operate effectively, and don't do it, is it accidental?
It's fun sabotaging a country that tried to kill you with a bioweapon to hell with Americans let's die of something else like men.
@No Drama Llama
nobody seems to answer that question.
My dad was a railroader for 40+ years. He was an inspector, carman, machinist and tool and dye maker. He'd be rolling in his grave if he knew what happened to his beloved railroad.!
Accidents and fatalities are actually down from when he railroaded.
Look at the subway system today, it's falling apart
@@ironmartysharpe8293 In the Penn Central days there were far far far more injuries than now. There were far more derailments on Penn Central. At the end their tracks were horrible. Their on time performance dismal. Since Penn Central derailments and injuries are way down. Do your homework.
Your father was a good man…
@@Xerdar36 Speculative. For all we know he was a wife beating drug addict and alcoholic who had bastard children all around town he neglected.
Three things that have broken the railroads, 1. Greed, 2. Deferred maintenance, and 3. Precision scheduled railroading.
You got that right , Whether greed alone is involved , They put safety in last place
Look what happened at Chernobyl , Major design flaws in the reactor and even though they were aware of it , The ones in charge wanted to get on with it because they were worried about their bonuses instead of safety
# 1 and 2 have been around since day one but PSR has exponentially worsened Railroad service and employee abuse.
They're trying to clear population from rural areas
th-cam.com/video/v7R93qBSe6g/w-d-xo.html
Deferred maintenance procrastination slacking in duties and equipment needed end up a make do disaster waiting to happen
Those 3 things have ruined more than just the railroad business. Greed, deferred maintenance, and precision scheduling, have ruined the government, corporations, the legal system.. and pretty much everything else.. 😊
This isn't only happening in rr industry but in every aspect of our lives. Money is put ahead of our health and wellbeing. These big corporations are trash these days.
you can thank the government for taking legal bribes(lobbying) and putting corporate profits ahead of americans' safety. This is mostly republican politicians doing this, so thank them.
@CRneu it's both parties. Every other year, they switch who's in power, and still nothing changes. They're all complicit in participating. They want you to think it's one side or another.
@@joshm8661That's because by and large, by the numbers, the party who is actually trying to remove regulation is only one party. Yeah, the other one doesn't try to put regulation back or do anything to fix it after they take power, but they also don't pass the measures to deregulate. Trump is on TV cutting giant red ribbons with giant scissors and boasting about saving "billions of dollars" for rail corporations, while republicans clap and cheer. Biden is the one spending trillions on infrastructure.
You can't "both sides" a problem that is propagated by one party, the facts disagree.
Especially In our healthcare industry!
The pharmaceutical company's don't make money to cure or get us well. So it's all about pills to keep us I'll. As actually resolving the problem via healthy living advise or physical exercise. Neither will come out of any mouth in healthcare.
Safety is literally not an issue. The is a propaganda piece to blame it on that. The high amount of accidents as of late involving derailments, food processing plant attacks, chemical processing facilities and warehouses. Its intentional. Its part of the plan.
I recently heard from a friend who works for the city I live in who said that when there was a repair on some problematic tracks in our downtown they discovered there was a water leak below them. They simply repaired the road. They didn't address the leak because it would shut the tracks down and that portion of town down for some time as a result. It's potentially creating a washout of the ground below with a sink hole being quite possible. We recently had a sinkhole about 2 blocks away that swallowed 2 cars.
They're trying to clear population from rural areas
th-cam.com/video/v7R93qBSe6g/w-d-xo.html
It’s more important to maximize profit and only fix things after they break using government relief funds and insurance
What city is this.
It’s cheaper for them to wait for a sinkhole 🤷♂️🤦♂️
That’s crazy that they just leave it. In The Netherlands we have a problem the European badgers digging holes underneath the tracks, they closed the line to dig them out but when they almost finished they found more down the line. They are literally playing wackamole at this point.
I was a locomotive electrician for 12 years and this is all absolutely true. My last three years, ending in 2020, were a complete joke.
I worked for a railroad safety company as a data analyst. You wouldn’t believe how common derailments actually are 😢
So is what we've been hearing on thenews kind of the norm? In regards to the amount of derailments?
Roughly 2000 a year
@@ltahoe9257yes we are actually behind the annual average at this time of year. Not that that is an ok thing to just accept as normal and ok.
As soon as Wall St is involved expect a train wreck to follow. And yes look what's happened
Wall st. Is a train wreck, has been for awhile now😂
There happens to be over 1,000 of them every year.
It seem to be more the fact that the government started regulating the rail ways the more competitors left leaving only the biggest to buy up the rest and then get sloppy because who else you going to use but you blame Wall Street hahaha
It seem to be more the fact that the government started regulating the rail ways the more competitors left leaving only the biggest to buy up the rest and then get sloppy because who else you going to use but you blame Wall Street hahaha
Capitalism baby
I worked for BNSF for many years.
I always inspected trains by the book. When I would report a defect to the dispatcher, he'd simply send out a buddy he had in the yard, which he had a relationship with, and his buddy would inspect the car I reported, and simply pass it . This happened all the time, in yards, on main lines ..
Terrifying. Management sees no profit in maintenance & safety. A whole lot of cost in accidents and lawsuits, though. Terrible way to run businesses.
@@ChubbyUnicorn When the cost of punishment is lower than the profits of the crime, this often happens. Hold the hedgies responsible.
My granddad used to work for Southern before they merged with Norfolk. He said after that he watched the railroad nosedive. Couldn't wait to retire.
Edit: Got to the part about the bearings and remembered after Granddad died we found a letter of acknowledgement from NS about how he prevented a derailment by demanding the train stop because as it passed through town he saw one of the wheels sparking. That was decades ago and they still haven't done a thing about letting the bearings run to death.
I have been a shipper of chemicals via rail since 1986.
I can confirm that this consolidation and cost cutting are real, and they impact safety. No doubt about it!
When it came time to purchase the property we are to retire upon soon, we chose land in a county with not one foot of track in it.
Similar has happened in the gas and electric utility industry. When management starts to become more beholden to shareholders than the safe maintenance and operation of their industry, it falls apart.
30 years in the trucking industry. Maintenance became #1. DOT in every state as we roll across the scales watch for any signs of leaky wheel seals and every other kind of leak. The difference has been amazing. Reliability is awesome in the trucking industry now a days. The problem that Reliability creates is that to many truckers have to much faith in their truck and push things to far in bad weather or fall asleep. Lack of an attention span contributes as well but that being said, trucking laws regarding Maintenance are very strict and we have come to enjoy the extra money we make not sitting in a repair facility as much. Most companies have an excellent maintenance team and it's worth it.
Oh. I know many trucking companies that make maintenance a low priority and have drivers fiddle with run and down time to put the push on tired drivers. Truckers are warriors, but still Humans. I guess when they are all replaced with a i, it'll all be solved. (Sure!)
If only the dot would inspect the rail cars.
Real.
Though honestly shouldn't it also be in railroad even more
Since like oil trains are like 50 trucks all connected together and operated by 2 guys
Feels like a giant recipe for disaster
...And How man truck wrecks are there every year...Let keep it to a number we can comprehend How man fatal truck accidents occur every year???, Come on tell us how dangerous rail traffic is now.
We had a saying when I worked for Union Pacific, “They’d jump over a dollar to save a dime”.
We had a similar saying in my industry “nickel holding up a dollar”
Is this greed… or stupidity?
@@vodkacannon both.
😂😂😂😂
Greed has certainly made them ignorant
Train derailment coming to a town near you seems like the motto.
Stay safe, my good people.
Everyone BEWARE pay attention if you live by tracks don't let your kids play around where the trains could go thru your yards. Good Luck & God bless all of us. Hope.
I worked for a Japanese/German General partnership that makes bearing seals (one of largest automotive oems) . The company decided they were going to break into the railroad industry. The project was ended when the Germans and Japanese were horrified by the maintenance practices of American railroads. "Run it until the wheels fall off" (no maintenance). Versus a complicated weight x distance maintenance calculations.
Sounds like every American operation I’ve ever seen. Keep it going until the wheels fall off.
@@stevens1041 then jump out and run. lol
They do not run them until the wheels fall off. The wheel bearings have temperature sensors on them and when they go bad, they get hot and the engineer is supposed to stop the train and call maintenance to change the bearing.
And they do get routine maintenance. The mechanic repacks the wheel bearing with new grease, inspects the beating while he has it out, and changes the grease seal on a regular basis.
Same with trucking and you no it goes on i the airlines to.
Family was in freight shipping and told me American ports were almost the worst in the world. Like some kind of apocalypse happened there after the industrial revolution and they never recovered or came up to date.
Union Pac train derailed next to my property in early 2020. They stacked the cars in my neighbor's field and had the track running in three days. Fixing the road crossing took a month. Cleaning up the cars took six months. One car was filled with salt that leached into the field. Nothing grows there three years later
Where was this? Sounds like there's a lawsuit there, no?
@@Yakuzachris10 near Knapp, WI. Not sure if the neighbor took legal action but a few months after the freight cars were finally removed we saw large trucks and excavators removing and replacing earth from the spot where the salt car had been sitting (ripped open, visible to all, through winter melt, spring showers, and summer storms). No doubt it helped but that area is dead. Give it a Google, photos from the crash are wild. Freight cars piled up and sticking into the air, crazy no one was hurt
@@samanthanewport6709 Be glad it wasn't haz mat chemicals leaching into your ground and water systems.
I can't link but I just watched The GrayZone's documentary on East Palestine's derailment. Same thing there, getting the track back up and running was priority number 1. Worth a watch if you'd like more information to make you angrier...
Forgot to add the video is titled "Poison and Private Police" because, unbeknownst to me, Norfolk Southern has their own police force that overrules local authority somehow.
Just like where I used to work running a printing press back in 1983. Safety, maintenance, profit sharing and employee moral was an important issue. As the years went by and the owners sons took over the business that all went by the wayside and they started cutting corners and not paying their bills and gradually ran the company into the ground. In 2018 it went belly up.
I heard a saying many years ago. "Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in 3 generations".
Greed, that's all it is. Companies are continually faced with only two options - either cut back on maintenance and replacement, or cut back on executive salaries and stock dividends.
(And they sure aren't going to cut executive salaries.)
You as the consumer externalize your costs to live by not correcting your own issues and pass that on to the rail company. That's why we are in this situation right now. Because of nationalization of the rail roads through crippling amounts of ineffective and counterproductive regulations. There is no reason for the lack of competition between rail besides government intervention in the sector. There is no reason that the rail companies are not liable for the damage the cause during spills, besides government intervention. There is no solution to this problem other than both fully deregulating the rail industry, and abolishing the public subsidization of all roads.
You got that right , Whenever greed is involved , They put safety in last place
Perhaps if one or more of their family members were killed by a train derailment or the poisonous chemicals spilled in a derailment , They may change their tune
Would they start caring about safety ?
That is yet to be seen
@@Voluntarists your thesis has no evidence. Try again
The board of directors are the greedy ones in proxy of their shareholders. CEOs obey their BoD who obey their shareholders and fire employees in masses at a whim or hint at their stock price being hurt - mostly Wall St types who trade their stock automatically in an instant at shifts in price. There is no honor amongst thieves. RIP the shareholder who held on to his investments long term.
And safety; as well as training. Spent over 25 years in safety and saw this frequently.
PSR (precision scheduled railroading) is a huge factor why derailments are increasing, getting rid of it would be a step in the right direction
I don't know exactly what that is, but usually it's cost cuts that come along things like this, not the things itself
@@jan-lukas PSR basically allows less time for carmen to check each individual car that's on a built train about to head out of the yard. I got off last night and they were checking the cars from the damn vehicle on a mile long cut of mixed freight
@@adahop7663 Neighbor of mine is an operations repair guy. He agrees with you about the ludicrously short inspection times allowed for axles, wheels, and bearings. PSR appears to be an extinction level event for the rail roading industry, because they own it all. He said that previously they spent .85 cents of every dollar earned on operations. Today it is .60 cents. They've jumped from 15% profit, to 40%!
@@jan-lukas Google “Precision Scheduled Railroading” (PSR) and it will be Perfectly Clear.
@@adahop7663 Very rarely do I watch a train go by with a flat wheeled car…there’s usually 5 or 6 flat wheeled cars! Ba dum da dum da dum “wow, that one was bad!” BA DUM BA DUM DA DUM! “That one was REALLY bad!
This is a glimpse into what going on in almost every industry.
I have been saying for a long time now that when a company goes public that alone creates an atmosphere within the company to direct all of it's attention to attracting stock sales and to producing a profit for share holders and not returning the needed money back into it's operations and infrastructure. A corporation that claims it is no longer profitable many times just means they can't keep the public share holders flowing in high gains so they cut corners elsewhere to shore up their stocks. In my mind it's like using your credit card or payday loans to get out of debt and kind of resembles a pyramid scheme. And then there is the grossly over paid management of which grossly doesn't begin to describe it because our language does have it's limits.
Some of what you say is correct, but those factors have little or no bearing (pardon the pun) on this event, or the one in East Palestine.
@@rjb5847 If you cut maintenance such as proper inspections and firing entire maintenance departments and refilling them with under trained workers you get East Palestine.
So a company asks us to invest money to help them grow, and we shouldn’t ask for some of that growth in return? Good to know……
I got 33 trillion never paid back doll hairs on that pyramid scheme ill never be a part of...
You slaves out there connecting the wrongest dots...
Heres your first clue Gumps...
Doing the same thing over and over again(paying sam to rape you)....Whats the rest of Einsteins definition of insanity???
Kowing the outcome(fkn 33 trillion chain slave bucks forever)and expecting another result???...
You can burn them out now or later,im not the one thats insane 335million deep....
Theyve tried every label for my brand of crazy and not one stuck...
You cant label integrity crazy tho...
Its just man shit society dropped just like balls i never dropped that clack when i walk now...
Hey,you could fix the world if you knew better,now you do...
Your scams and schemes youve funded and turned against us all..
At some point youll be at my bottom line,since youve started seeing the truth...
Lets see how your pride does here,because most people only claim to be good,then their actions prove they were always trash...33 trillion reasons why their labels fit 335 taxtarded slaves,and will never fit this grown ass man...
Ive proven your insanity by defintion,ive been to official places where ive seen it...
Im watching you live it yourselves fully paid up and fully tf in denial(probaly hating any one of the other only party in a 6 party system,and buying those tarded wedges)....
That one is the only one any of you fks could maybe argue a little,so i dont a reply back from any of your self made whiner asses...
KEEP IT GUMPY 🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑
Yes, getting fined or jailed and sued is definitely a sharp business practice.
When I hired out on the Railroad in 1968. We had 5 crew members on Road freight train. Three crew members on a locomotive and 2 members in the Caboose. When I retired in 2001 we were down to 2 crew members and no Cabooses. Now, these class 1 railroads are still pushing for 1 crewman only on the locomotive. Trains nowadays can exceed 2 miles long. It's impossible for 2 crew members to watch their insanely long trains for defects.
I mean the Caboose is kind of obsolete though isn't it? Bit like Brake Vans here in the UK.
Was out for a walk when I discovered that the metal-framed concrete section of sidewalk inside the tracks was broken, and a piece of the metal was shoved up against the track and had clearly been driven over by a train. Thankfully, police rolled up, stopped, and started talking on the phone. Later, railroad personnel showed up. Next walk, that section was replaced by wooden ties placed lengthwise within the tracks. Even if it gets messed up like before, the wood will simply break away. Feels much safer now.
Norfolk Southern came up with a modernized version of brake operation and bearing monitoring. *_They then lobbied against it when it was going to be regulated as a requirement!_* They externalize their costs to do business by not correcting their own issues and pass that on to the public. We all pay to fix their mistakes.
They will pay BIG in East Palistine. The lawyers are flocking there.
Absolutely amazing how big business works.
They didn't actually come up with modernized version. ECP brakes were developed some time ago, and mandated by a specific date. The cost of implementing PTC was also affecting railways and it was found that it would be impossible to implement on the original timeline. NS lobbied against the implementation date. While ECP brakes are more effective, they would have mattered little in East Palestine. In addition distributed power has increased the effectiveness of existing air (& dynamic) brakes. The implementation date ECP braking had to be in place is not as big a deal safety wise as other factors.
@@rjb5847 which railroad do you work for?
That's absurd. You as the consumer externalize your costs to live by not correcting your own issues and pass that on to the rail company. That's why we are in this situation right now. Because of nationalization of the rail roads through crippling amounts of ineffective and counterproductive regulations. There is no reason for the lack of competition between rail besides government intervention in the sector. There is no reason that the rail companies are not liable for the damage the cause during spills, besides government intervention. There is no solution to this problem other than both fully deregulating the rail industry, and abolishing the public subsidization of all roads.
It's not just the railroads. It's the entire petrochemical industry. The INEOS plant in Pasadena Texas had an explosion and fire occur today. INEOS produces polyethylene vinyl. According to what the city has stated in press releases, everything is okay and no need to worry about pollution (plus the obligatory thoughts and prayers to the injured) but no body from INEOS has come forward with a statement about what occurred. Furthermore, the Harris County pollution investigators are only testing north of the incident and not a full radius around the site.
The PFAS from this incident that is emitted into people's bodies, are a great way to boost future medical and big Pharma profits. Poor people are the bottom of the food chain. Let Jesus save you.
polyethylene vinyl when ignited changes into something much worse as you are most likely aware. This stuff is so toxic. :(
It's not just the railroads or petrochemical industry. It's the whole (western) world. Only when the last river is poisoned, the last animal dead, the last tree burned down, the last community or family broken because of money and greed, will we realize that we cant eat or breath money, that good and bad is in ourselves and how we behave and treat others and that the illusion that everybody is isolated and we are disconnected from the people around us is wrong and we are dragging ourselves into the abyss.
I believe it. Pray it doesn't happen again! If NS was smart they'd be beefing up inspections big time.
@@kenfarley957 NS will be sued into oblivion.
A year or two ago a train derailed on my street right near my house. Nobody was hurt, thank goodness, but this subject hits a little close to home after that. I don’t mind the 10-20 trains a day deafening the air with their horns and screechy wheels, but it is sad that even safety checks are too much to ask these days.
Countries like Japan or Germany have high speed rails that don't experience the same amount of breakdown as the trains in the USA.
Corporations call it 'regulation' or 'de-regulation' but let's be real... it's not regulation, it's protection. It's not de-regulation, it's removing checks and balances that make it safe for everyone else so they can pocket more money.
Corporate greed is the problem. They only care about the money, nothing else.
I call it influence. When a decision must be made the benefactor is always the person with the most over the person with the least.
thats just un regulated capitalism. Dude if you just look at the basic idea of capitalsim and how it gets perverted because of greed. Capitalism is the pursuit of money at any cost and is inherently linked to greed its just natural. Anyone who gets to the top of a huge company like that is inherently the most greedy and willing to do anything to get to the top. So its normal that without a change in thinking, from the bottom line to providing a good service and balancing that with profit.....nothing will change. Just look at all the other industries, big beef, all the agricultural industires, the car industry, all our manufacturing is outside.....
There really is no such thing as deregulation. It is more about who gets to set the rules and who is held accountable. We have left industries to "self regulate" and have let industrial interests capture regulatory agencies to work in the industry's favor. A prime example is regulatory capture of the FAA and the Boeing 737 Max disaster.
@@rjung_ch Greed destroys everything.
I live 2 blocks from a railroad and I can tell you that the trains now are a lot longer than they use to be!
We had rebar and tons of bad metal on one of the rail crossing near a factory plant were I lived. It both destroyed wheels and I'm sure if not enough people complained about it, it would have caused a derailment at some point since it took them five plus years to fix or even to address.
Maybe this isn't as big as what I'm making it to be but I've never heard of so many derailments in my life until now.
I figured somebody was deliberately derailing them. I really wouldn't be surprised if we,eventually, find out there is.
That's what's really going on. To blatantly avoid maintenance when you're spilling chemicals every where isn't coincidence. If you make it seem normal, no one will notice it's being done on purpose.
ANTIFA
I agree 100%. And everyone who doesn't see it for what it is is willfully blind.
Stop...
They literally explained the whole thing in the video and you people are still like "No, no, it's the boogie man!".
Not everything is a conspiracy. This, like so much that is wrong in this country, boils down to corporate greed. It's the corporations' drive to maximize profits at all costs.
@@keithcraig506so your saying it's corporate conspiracy.
Leaders of corporations conspire to save money and this is the result. Thanks
Ban stock buybacks. Take away the tax incentives for these hedge funds to own the railroads (and other vulture endeavors). Take away their 15% loophole for paying taxes
Good luck with that. The people reaping the profits are the ones making the rules. Welcome to capitalist America.
I live near a railroad track. It's not used to much nowadays. But just the other day I drove by a staging area and I saw 3 carts flipped on their sides and grains that were in the carts were spilled all over the place.. kinda strange!
I follow permaculturist Mark Shepard, who wrote Restoration Agriculture. He said the corporate freight monopoly is a problem for small farmers as cars are rented up to 20 years in advance and small farmers are often effectively locked out from a way to affordably ship food.
This needs to change.
We need more freight and passenger rail, and more localization, as opposed to globalization, which is pushed by globalist elitists.
Well stated.
That is a problem on both sides of the border, but separate from the safety issues.
The 13 fams are quite busy, aren't they!
Way too late to change a thing. Folks shoulda shut the tv off and verified the legalized (in 1986, right?) poopaganda. Just like ch -- only the ch citizens KNOW, and ummmericans remain largely...cluelessly Trusting .
we need less rail. there is no railroad that exist without government intervention. trucking is the only way to break the globalist stranglehold that is rail
Two words: negative externalities
Basically, shifting private costs onto the community (Norfolk increased dividends and bought back $10B worth of their stock last year instead of responsibly spend money to upgrade their technology and bring back their workforce to increase safety standards). Isn't it ironic how Republicans talk about responsibility and then hate to be responsible for internalizing the cost of their business?
Yes. Greed has infected our world and is destroying it. The love of money is the root of all evil. The corrupt are running these countries and lying to us. These greedy, hypocrites can never be trusted. Devoid of integrity. Our world is upside down and people are wack. I look up trusting and focusing on God. Walk by Faith. Not by sight. 😊
Come on now.. its 2023... two sides of the same coin. You. We've known for awhile what the Republicans were about, but you have to to be real deal delusional to not see the madness in the democratic party..
There are three other parties. Independents, green party, and libertarian
Isn’t it also ironic how once democrats are in office and have total control of the federal government, they STILL fail to correct any of these issues. It’s almost as if they don’t want to. Hey - wait a second! They’re exactly the same! Wake up time!!!
Yes, they are disgusting people indeed.
The latest merger referenced in this video was under a Democratic administration. The problem is government in general. The point of fingers to a specific party is nothing more than a smoke screen. Both are to blame.
I drive truck and I saw one in tehachapi recently and it wasn't all over the news or nothing, but it was all up in the canyon.
Your video was well done and these movements of products are very important. Some things shouldn't change..
One thing you pointed to is what they call the axle bearing or as it is technically known as CTRB bearing; caged taper roller bearing. I’ve looked in depth about these bearings. A lot of what I’m going to say is my own opinion. First let’s go back to the days of steam engines and rail cars that had the old style grease box bearing assembly on the trunion frame assembly, the same trunion frame design still in use today. In the days of steam locomotives could only go so far then the crews would stop to put on coal/oil and water. At that time they would grease the locomotive drive component’s with pneumatic grease guns and check the grease box on every axle just by lifting the door on the box and looking in to see the grease levels and add additional grease when needed; quick and easy. Then with the introduction of diesel electric locomotives in the late 30’S that had CTRB bearings on the traction motor/trunion assemblies the locomotives could go on for thousands of miles with no maintenance. But what about the grease box bearings on the rail cars-oops now we have a problem. I don’t know who came up with the original solution, probably a bearing manufacturer. The solution was and still is the CTRB bearing assembly that was designed to fit existing rail car axle design in that old cars with the grease box bearing could have the hole axle assembly switched out and a new axle assembly installed that fit right into the trunion frame assembly and all new rail cars coming off the production line would have the new no-serviceable CTRB as original equipment, that solved a lot off problems but created new problems. The CTRB bearing has a estimated service life before it’s considered scrap and that’s well understood by the bearing manufacturers . But what 2 main variables is internal degradation of the grease going bad-drying out and internal parts of the bearing in the form of metal chips that get into the grease that cannot be seen by visual inspection. Second is the outer seal failure and grease coming out of the bearing. The only way to do a proper bearing inspection is you have to use a hydraulic press to pull the bearing off the axle because the wheel and bearing assemblies are hydraulically pressed on to the axle under vary high tonnage loads. This means pulling the car out of service and lifting the rail car and swapping out each axle assembly and installing new ones then running to others through a rebuild process. One thing the RR’s are doing is over the decades, installing equipment defects detectors hoping to catch hot bearings and side line the car on a siding have a crew come out with special equipment to lift the car and replace the suspect axle assembly then send it on its way. Well sometimes they might not stop the train in time. You’ve got around 28,000lbs or 14 tons per bearing assembly load on a fully loaded car, let’s say a 30,000 gallon capacity car. When that bearing goes over the max operating temperature that I’ve found out is 150 degrees Fahrenheit and is in the 250 degree range you don’t have much time to get that Train stopped. As said in the video and it’s this is my opinion that they are not doing a proper job of axle bearing preventive maintenance and inspection on these CTRB bearings.
In this instance, the bearing was on fire for at least 20 miles as it was captured on video passing through the previous town. I worked for a specialty vehicle manufacturer eventually ending up in the warranty department. Customer would call and say one thing but that is not what happened. Many times they knew something was goofy and drove it to destruction anyway. The reason RR are getting away with driving it to destruction is the cost of doing so is not prohibitive enough to not drive it to destruction. I don't know if 1,700 derailments a year is too many but is the accepted cost of doing business. I will say one derailment of a constructed chemical weapon of mass destruction that contaminates air, drinking water and farm land is one too many.
What happened in East Palestine was negligence on orders of magnitude. Not so much from a wheel bearing failure as that seems the accepted cost of business but totally negligent to string all those chemicals onto one train then send it down the tracks knowing a derail would be catastrophic event. If they didn't know it would be a catastrophic event that it is even more negligent.
There needs a major attitude adjustment as it's an intolerable position to accept derails and the assembling of chemical weapons of mass destruction. I also worked in Environmental, Health & Safety. Never would that be accepted policy under my supervision. It was my job (ass) to protect the company by preventing the company and it's employees from doing stupid things and they did stupid things. A manufacturer does not need all 115k gallons of chemical be delivered in one day. That delivery schedule may be convenient for the RR but it makes a chemical weapon of mass destruction. Stop that kind of stupidity with fines so severe they stop doing it.
Ok! Longest comment I've ever seen on TH-cam, congratulations. FYI, I am not going to read it. If you want people to read it, you should cut that at least in half
@@yvetteandjorgenlarsen9753: Okay, it may be the longest post / comment you have seen on YT, but, some posts are not able to be edited and keep all of the required information. Historical information, plus comparison to modern day operations, combined with solutions is pertinent to the discussion.
@@billbirch3748 i agree with you but there are other narratives that drive this. I’m retired out of the automotive/industrial transportation business. And starting I’d say in the 60’s was and is none serviceable bearings and U-joints that cannot be greased and the only way is to use-operate till they fail. Now on semi trucks all the axle tapered bearings at all axle points are in one way or another lubed by 90wt gear oil and if the oil is clean they will go a million miles. The only issue is a seal failure. If a deteriorating seal is caught in time all you have to do is R&R the seal and reuse the bearings. I’ve got a 77 Buick that’s been in the family for 40 years-daily driver. I had to replace the U-joints 30 years ago because from the factory they where none serviceable , grease dried up. I installed grease able U-joints and they are still in their. I’ve got 200k on them. I grease the car at every oil change. Then another issue is the railroad cars are spec out to haul a dedicated commodity. So to cut down the amount of gallons hauled per car you need more cars to haul the same amount of product. Then they dead head the cars back to the manufacturer of the product. Then to properly inspect the bearings on all axles requires taking the car out of service which means downtime and lost revenue. The bottom line is risk management and money.
@@111jacare what’s your point
5 member crew in 1956. Fireman, Brakemen, Engineer, Conductor and Rear trainmen. 3,200 tons 76 cars and caboose. 12 hours rest. Now 2 member crew, RR's wants 1 man crew. I guess this helps RR Mgt bottom line. PSR (Precision Scheduled Railroading) ,4,100 tons 125 cars trains, rest when they tell you, no time off.
Not quite. 10-12,000 tons and 150-200 cars under current PSR operating plans. 2 man (trying for 1) crews. 6 day work weeks (then 48 hours off) 10 hours rest between work assignments that start or end at any hour, day or night. Begin at your home terminal, go to the away from home terminal, sleep in a hotel, start back after 10 hours rest or maybe not for 40-50 hours before they need you again so just wait. Don't call us, we'll call you. Horrible lifestyle. Worked far too much, missed a lot of my families life.
The situation faced by rail workers with understaffing, nickel and diming of greedy management, poor working conditions, etc reminds me SO much of what it is like working as a nurse in healthcare. Nursing homes and then hospitals are very much operating under the same flawed model. There needs to be money taken away from management and administration "fluff" jobs, and put into having REAL people doing the real work on the ground level. There are huge negative consequences for both our society doesn't need.
That bridge that woman was yelling from is Corizo Gorge and it is no longer used, it is the biggest wooden Tressle in the world though. That line was last used in 2012, runs from Tijuana, Mexico to Plaster City, California.
Wasn't that the old Southern Pacific trestle?
@@michaelsnyder8488 Yes, I believe they are one in the same. It was called the Impossible railroad because they had to blast through all kinds of rock to do it. It's really a work of art.
1.700 Derailments per year, and that´s "only" for freight trains? That´s absolutely insane, at least since 2010 (couldn´t find older Data easily) the entire EU combined reported between 70 and just over 100 derailments per year, and that´s AFAIK for passenger and freight combined.
I know the airlines are .................. why I don't fly so now I won't ever have a train ride except if still at Griffith Park Observatory. Two people per car, grown ups yes. Very fun & safe, no other train, car or people traffic none. A great train ride. Fun.
@@jwilcox4726 You don't fly because?
He said the maintenance costs a little extra money but it doesn’t! If you look at how much more profit they are seeing, the cost is negligible. They simply don’t care.
The fact that railroads cut crews, servicing, and lines is because of a thing by the name of precision scheduled railroading started to streamline American railroads which caused them to make trains longer and run crews for longer hours reduce equipment servicing all in a scheme to improve railroads when it has actually caused more derailments strikes and worse working conditions for crews
If a company is posting record profits, they shouldn't be getting tax breaks, especially if they're poisoning and killing towns the way these railroads have done. Additionally, any fines should be a percent of the business' gross income (NOT their profits; all it takes is a bit of accounting to legally come out with record gross income and no official profits).
It's always the same answer when things get worse. The greed of the top 0.1%.
I've never seen a place so absolutely saturated and ruined by corporate greed. From the very dirt underneath the pavement, to everything above it, everything is just forsaken for the sake of money. It's destroyed all my optimism towards the future, and I'm barely in my twenties.
I'm only 25, and I've seen enough to know the U.S. government is destroyed by corp greed
I feel you on that one. And the shitty thing is that it used not be this way until Reagan came and sparked boomer conservativism.
I can get onboard with railroad whistleblowers
I wish it was an all aboard situation. and toot toot, me too.
Too many puns on this joke train. This is against regulations, you might derail the seriousness of this topic.
Don't be spotted by security.
@@WanderingExistence I want to derail corporate and government sponsored crimes, really.
Choo Choo.
It's not only the danger of derailments: Sparking bearings requiring maintenance but are neglected can cause wildfires.
interesting to note the differences in the hotbox detectors between railroads, in particular the information given after a train has passed the detector
I have been a railroad worker for decades and you are just starting to scratch the surface of how bad things are/have gotten. Good luck everyone!!! Money runs the railroads.
as it does everything else today!!!!!
Money runs EVERYTHING, Greed is #1. People truly care about anything but fake paper money. It's really sad...
The solution is not necessarily more regulation or deregulation, its targeted regulation. Start with damages. If there's a derailment, like in E Palestine, then they are responsible for the costs of making people whole. That means the cleanup costs, property depreciation, all of it. That will make maintaining their equipment MORE COST EFFECTIVE and incentivize them to also look at the railbed and call out THE GOVERNMENT that has FAILED TO INVEST AND MAINTAIN it.
I live in London Ontario and the train in this city and all its cargo rails run directly thru the center of our city and along a major river (Thames River) that leads right to the great lakes at a massive risk to the environment. After Ohio and several videos like your awesome one here, I'm convinced were extremely lucky and very stupid to have allowed our rail infrastructure to be built in this way and not had a major disaster here yet. As of this year 2023 our city FINALLY has started to make plans to make heavy cargo routes around the city instead of thru and they lowered the speed limit thru town as well, I'm very glad you and many others have brought attention to this very deadly topic, it's saving lives! Greed and transportation have never been a good mix, Thank you. 👍👍
I love how this footage makes clear the responsibility Warren Buffet has in this.
Lol It never really mentions him
She did say Norfuck, though
@@jamesdavis5096s’how it’s pronounced - weird, I know, but true
@@EclipseAtDusk Nawfuck.
Most of the railroad investors are jewish
The report for East Palestine, Ohio said the track was well maintained.
Though very reliable, bearings do occasionally fail. Like automobiles,
they pick the time and place to fail.
What might be problematic is empty railcars that have a low tare weight
placed in the middle of a train. An light unloaded flat car surrounded by
heavy tank and hopper cars may jump the track easier than a string of full,
heavy tank cars.
As for the bridge, if it is in sound condition, there is no need to replace it.
Many bridges are pretty old but they are still sound.
THISHAS BEEN PROVEN TOO MANY TIMES!IT IS A FACT!IF YOU PUT AN EMPTY FLATCAR IN THE MIDDLE OF A TRAIN CARRYING HEAVY, LOADED TANKCARSAND LOADED HOPPERCARS, THAT FLATCAR WILL CAUSE A TRAIN TO DERAIL, CAUSING DEADLY DERAILMENTS!IN MODEL RAILROADING, MY FREIGHT CARS DERAILED WHEN I HAD LIGHTWEIGHT FREIGHTCARS THAT WAS EMPTY THIS IS A FACT!THE TRAIN WILL DERAIL EVERY TIME! AND THIS IS WHATS DANGEROUS ABOUT THESE TRAINS!
Exactly. What ive been saying. Empty carts, that got unloaded halfway through and didnt get removed or reloaded. Back pressure rising it up or a grade when the train brakes.. Poor rail maintenance. High speeds. All factors.
While it is true that bearings can fail at any time, it is still no excuse to be running a car where there is obvious damage to the bearing. It would be like driving your car when you know the rotors and pads on your brakes are overdue for replacement.
@@nispelsm If the damage is obvious.
@@AQuietNight By "obvious", I'm of course including bearings that were inspected and found to be worn to where they are at high risk of failure, but the company kept the car in service over the objections of the inspector. There is NO excuse for this.
It would be like taking your car in for a state inspection, the mechanic notes that your brake pads are close to failure, and you drive off without getting them replaced and without passing the inspection. So now you're driving with an expired inspection, your brakes fail, you cause an accident, and you try to claim innocence because "there was no way to know my brakes would fail". This is what the railroad companies are doing, every day of the year.
Thank u for ur reporting this. We need more of this. Great report very informative.
More Perfect Union :) Thank you!! for keeping US informed.
I remembered that wood trestle that carried the old Southern Pacific Railroad from San Diego to Niland, California. They didn't run long trains on that route because there was a lot of steep grades and it cut through the mountains of Southern California and Mexico through the desert through El Centro and connects to the main line at Niland. Doesn't run into Mexico anymore and that line was sold to a short line railroad around 1980. Now the San Diego Trolley
This was very informational, well done 👏
There was a railroad line that used to run through parts of the city I live in now, which ran right behind my late grandfather's old home. It was shut down years ago, and most of the path was turned in to walking trails, but a lot of it down the line is still there.
It's not sabotage .. it's entropy.. our rail system is pretty much the oldest infrastructure in America and needs a complete overhaul
"overhaul"...👍
True. We need more rail maintenance instead of the overwhelming amount invested in roads.
@@JusticeAlways thanks lol
Ports and Erie Canal--wait, they have been worked on also.
What would also be nice is if government bought out the rails themselves, as well as a big push for new freight and passenger rail.
The railroads companies can still be private.
🚨 Hedge funds SHOULD BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL CLEANUPS OF THEIR DISASTERS! THE RAIL SYSTEM SHOULD BE APART OF STATE INFRASTRUCTURES NOT IN THE HANDS OF HEDGE FUND OWNERS OR FOREIGN NATIONS OR ENTITIES!
The reason disasters are piling up is the unrelenting chase for profits at any cost, especially the human cost paid by the poor and middle class for the powers to be not controlling natural events, and exaggerating their negative impact by neglect.
You as the consumer externalize your costs to live by not correcting your own issues and pass that on to the rail company. That's why we are in this situation right now. Because of nationalization of the rail roads through crippling amounts of ineffective and counterproductive regulations. There is no reason for the lack of competition between rail besides government intervention in the sector. There is no reason that the rail companies are not liable for the damage the cause during spills, besides government intervention. There is no solution to this problem other than both fully deregulating the rail industry, and abolishing the public subsidization of all roads.
I am horrified to hear these facts because my house and property sits about 400 feet or less from a CSX railroad tracks. Every day they haul very short trains maybe 4 or 5 box cars and 2 or 3 chemical cars back and forth through our neighborhood. Since the derailment in Ohio I have noticed that the trains going through seem to be going a lot slower than they used to. And the tracks are up on a hill so if the train were to derail I can just imagine them roll off the tracks hitting my house and spilling those chemicals everywhere. I am retired now so god help me because I am home a lot more than I used to be when I worked.
This video is short on facts & tall on speculation & opinion.
I am right there with you. I live 600 ft from the tracks and I also live 9 miles north of where the recent Glendale, KY derailment happened. So this is something that is on my mind quite often, every time I hear the train horns blowing I just hope it stays on the tracks.
@@rjb5847 "Train derailments in the United States are relatively common, with an average of 54,539 derailments between 1990 and 2021 and 1,704 per year in 2023 according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS)". Hope that helps
@@rjb5847 Thank you, Mr. Knowitall
@@rona4960 You're welcome. I'm quite happy to outline my nearly 40 yrs experience in the industry, including operating trains, investigating accidents, working on committees with federal regulators & accident investigators etc...if you need clarification
It's because railroad workers are unionized and the company can't exploit them as much as they can other kinds of employees. So they just understaff and ignore safety.
Nationalize the railroads already.
A fellow Alan Fisher fan I see! We absolutely should
That consolidates power and remember Amtrak is nationalized too, but does a poor job...
@@b_uppy The reason Amtrak sucks is because they're underfunded and they mostly run on tracks owned by freight railroads who prioritize their own trains over Amtrak's passenger trains.
@@IBeforeAExceptAfterK
That's merely another component of why Amtrak sucks, and it comes from government protectionism of large corporations and deprioritizing of passenger rail...
@@b_uppy non sense. Amtrack’s biggest problem is that it is a public service thats being ran as a private corporation.
There is no way a private railroad could make a profit serving small towns Amtrack does. Britain tried and its been a failure. So much so the UK has been force to scrap the franchising model that existed purely to insure towns across england got service.
Many smaller towns have been abandoned in Japan, in-fact some prefecture governments had to step in to make sure towns were getting service and some prefectures like Hokkaido renationalized.
As for freight rail private companies has repeatedly failed to invest in the long term sustainability and survivability of the industry, we’ve given it too many chances. Its time to hold the industry accountable. Private companies no longer have foresight, in this age of stock market capitalism the only people holding Class I railroads accountable are stockholders.
They have always derail a lot, but it usually doesn't get reported beyond local news. A few years back a train had a massive derailment in Wellington, Ohio. No news coverage outside the Cleveland metro area. The train spilled thousands of gallons of diesel fuel, came with in 5 feet of smashing into a factory full of people, destroyed a rail crossing cutting a street in half, and put at threat the neighborhood on the opposite side of the tracks.
The reason that wasn't national news was that the train was carrying construction materials and produce. I mean, some rocks, styrofoam and onions aren't really a major threat to a neighborhood, and the train was slowing down as it entered the area so it's not like the cars were in danger of hopping off and careening through a home at 60mph..
No, the real reason it wasn't national news is the same reason the derailments are happening in the first place: news is a for-profit business, and a no injuries/threat event means no opportunity to sensationalize the event and drive up viewership.
Only 15 miles from me, I remember this only 2 towns away.
4 weeks ago, a train derailed here in NW Washington carrying like 5000 gallons of Diesel. Spilled right into the ocean.
Nobody talks about it. lol.
It happens because they don't care about safety anymore, just the almighty dollar instead. They need to police the railroads like they do the trucking industry!
Excellent video! Keep up the good reporting!
It's full of generalizations, opinions by non experts & errors in fact.
It is interesting that positive train control (PTC) was forced on railroads to "improve safety" and yet they are becoming less safe; and this at a time when train miles are down!
They build loop holes in the law when written and the republicans vote down all regulations to control some of this greed & corruption but some don't get the message on why regulations where voted in by the people in the first place. Sad.
Derailments are no accident; the corporate elites know why it happens and accept the losses.
I remember George Carlin once said, there use to be 7 oil companies, now there are 3.
he died 15 years ago
@@davidjones-vx9ju So what ? His point is still valid.
@@DipayanPyne94 there might be a different number now
@@davidjones-vx9ju I don't know about that. I just know that corporate consolidation is a big problem.
George was IN their club of "famous" crazies ... and permitted to talk .. in humor.
The railroad industry is one more example in America of shareholder value and profit being priority one, and all other concerns are priority non-existent.
Another example is Southwest Airlines. The disaster of this recent Christmas was in part due to a scheduling system that hasn't been updated since the 90s!
How do we fix it? My first thought - not given it much thought - was to more heavily tax shareholders on earnings when their profits come from companies whose profits exceed the average for that industry. Take a random company, NFS let's say made 30% while average was 15% because more layoffs and cost cutting than average. Tax the hell out of NFS shareholders some ungodly amount ... in repayment for their crying to their board of directors all year for demanding more more more profits and EPS.
@@thebluelunarmonkey tax the wealthy again. The tax rate on the top 1% prior to JFK was a whopping 90%!!! People who lived during the Depression and prior did this intentionally to stop greedy monopolies and billionaires from having more control than regular people. They knew what deregulation and greed does. But boomers got greedy and voted for conservatives like Reagan that bumped that top 1% tax rate down into the 30s, removed all those regulations written in blood by those who witnessed disasters, and made it borderline criminal to be poor and intentionally widened the wealth gap to benefit the boomers who had an easy time starting large companies after their parents risked hell to make America great. They sabotaged the country to make themselves rich while making it damn near impossible for future generations to live as well as they did. This shit is extremely fixable, but absolutely nobody wants to admit that a few decisions in the 1970s-1990s lead to what you see today. Trains derailing is only a result. Fixing train regulations is only a band aid fix until the US goes back to punishing being filthy rich and focuses on preventing accidents as opposed to paying it in court and moving on. Big government became a thing to protect the little guy, not shield rich bastards from scrutiny. Conservatives who want to protect rich people and strike down regulations and focus solely on profit are anti-American.
Train wheels flanges are essential to help keep the train on the track. But yet they are too small.
1" of wheel lift is all it takes for a wheel to come off the rail; especial on a curve. Make the flanges a bit longer and I guarantee you there will be less derailments.
I say around 2010 a train flew by me in town. I couldn’t measure the speed, but it was dangerously fast and out the norm, but turned into the norm.
Train crews do not typically or intentionally speed. The train you saw was not likely moving "dangerously fast", as speeds are strictly mandated by engineering specs as well as operating rules. If trains started moving at higher speeds in your area, it would be because infrastructure has been improved and/or equipment is being used that is rated for higher speeds.
@@rjb5847 👍
@@rjb5847 piece of junk rolling by me is what had me nervous. You’re missing something in your utopia.
@@rjb5847 answering your own questions from a statement shows guilt from a warped notion
@@rjb5847 to be continued lol
Imagine if these CEOs' heads started being put on pikes in every single town that this happened in. I bet these derailments would stop in a jiffy.
I have a friend who works for the railroad and I asked him why the engines on the back of the train. He said that they are pusher engines for really long trains and they found out the hard way with derailments that you cannot have any empty cars in the string when using pusher engines because they pop up off the track. All cars must be fully loaded.
Yes, they will put the slave in the middle to push the full cars and pull the empties.
@@martylost167 Thanks for the reply. I have seen engines in the middle. Makes sense now.
There are two tracks that run smack dab in the middle of my city. They're less than a mile away from my house. I'm always worried.
I am 15 miles SE of Elgin IL. They can blame the previous Party in charge, fine. The current Party in charge has had over two years to correct things if regulations are bad yet they didn't even acknowledge East Palestine Ohio. Politics aside, C'mon man!
@@jeffrobodine8579 The Repugs fight all regulations always, no matter how essential. And the parties are virtually tied now.
Always, since the Ohio one at least
If you drive a car you should be way more worried. If you ride a bike anywhere on public roads, you have a death wish.
If every time there was a train derailment, no matter how small, the company was fined a minimum of $10 Million plus clean up costs we would see how fast derailments stopped happening.
Why not make it 100 billion gazillion?
You understand they are working with very heavy equipment in an imperfect and weather worn environment, right? Derailments will NEVER go away. This obsession with thinking there will be zero derailments is ridiculous. Technology and safety improvements have reduced the amount of both FRA and non-FRA reportable derailments significantly even just in my 24 year career.
No you wouldn't. That might sound good, but it would mean the end of rail companies and an astronomical increase in the cost of consumer goods as well as huge increase in environmental degradation. In most cases small derailment pose no risks and are a result of human error.
@@TheNemosdaddy . Didn't the man interviewed in this clip say that cars with dry or damaged wheel bearings are sent on their way or did I miss something? There should be zero bad bearings getting by, they have detectors! We're dealing with big machines carrying dangerous chemicals. Someday there'll be enough spills that there will be little uncontaminated land and streams left.
RRs would be out of business in a year or two and the economy would shut down and we'd be starving. Sounds great, let's do some knee-jerk legislating!!
Maybe the track is being cut.
The "Break" in Sacramento does not look like a break, it looks torched.
So the tracks in Minnesota and Ohio are out in the middle of nowhere, where anyone could drive up to the track at 2:00 am and begin cutting without anyone knowing.
People need to ensure the safety of the people
This video needs so many likes. People need to see and hear what's been going on.
You didn’t touch upon the military rely on the train network to move tanks and troops etc.
How much of these hedge funds are owned by offshore people/companies/CCP ?
When I was driving truck I drove one with a grease reservoir on the back of the cab that I could grease all the non-rotating chassis lube points, every day, simply by turning the crank on top of the reservoir...why can't they do something like that for railcar bearings?
it costs money.. that is why. they want profits not to spendmoney only make it.
As a truck driver, you’re responsible for the condition of your truck every time you drive it. A train crew does little to no preventative maintenance themselves. Their primary concern is making sure that freight gets there with as little downtime as possible. If something fails on your truck, you are likely to get hurt. On a train, unless there is a mechanical issue with the locomotives, it’s likely that a derailment won’t impact the crew at all as far as injuries. So what if the 35-42 car in a train derails, you’re safe.
My small town has a branch line passing through it. Even though there will be days where no trains pass by at all, trains are pretty common. The line passes right by the high school and if a derailment were to happen, the cost will be heavy
@Yuck Foutube well, I think so since the tracks are very old from the newer tracks I see near the east
I still don’t understand how a company could possibly make more money by not doing proper maintenance to prevent what seems like a much more costly accident. I wish there was a mathematical breakdown of how the actually make more money this way. It seems so counterintuitive.
I guess because it cost money to do enough maintenance to keep it in top shape rather than fixing when it breaks, after all there are very little consequences when something does happen.
@@josealfonsocontretas5724 wow. Maybe that’s the problem, that there’s not enough consequences. Fines need to be imposed that would make it financially advantageous to actually do the maintenance then. Still very hard to understand how the maintenance costs could be more than the costs involved in a derailment.
We are living through a second gilded age. Just a corrupt corporations and government. This is sickening.
Of course it's sickening and the average person is too weary to do anything about it. It's called money in politics. With minor exceptions it owns and controls our congress.
Corporations ARE the gov. Actually. Yup ... sickening frawd for over 150 yrs
WE THE PEOPLE need to have a "board" and looking over their shoulders, making sure not one dry bearing sneaks through. The government is usually overzealous about safety (or used to be), now they're letting bad bearings pass, knew this before trains derail, and people are limited on the extent they can sue?
Damn, this is a very well done video! Everytime I thoulght I wasnt going to get an explanation for the next part it happened anyway in great detail.
Now they’ve paid someone to convince me this is normal even though ive lived by trains my entire life and never witnessed 1 derailment. BS
The anti-trust statutes are still there. We just have to insist that they are enforced.
And redefine what a monopoly is.
A few corporations are dominating practically every aspect of our lives, it's a variation of the monopoly problem.
It's like the song verse 'I owe my soul to the company store'...
@@b_uppy Sixteen tons! Tennessee Ernie Ford
@@bevinboulder5039
Best version with his deep baritone voice.
@@b_uppy Yes. He was a great artist.
Yeah and I’m sure all those wonderful law makers who directly profit off of the monopolies and lobbyists are going to get right on that 😂😂😂
The obvious solution: Nationalize the tracks, and treat them as the critical infrastructure they are.
Would help fix the atrocious state of passenger rail too, since those trains often get delayed by freight trains and the pathetic state the tracks are in.
Also safety regulations need to exist, and be enforced. A town destroyed because a multi-billion-dollar corporation can't grease a ball bearing?! The entire management chain that allowed this to happen needs to be locked up for a long time, starting at the very top.
There's a reason why most rail infrastructure around the world is state owned (even if there are private companies operating on those tracks). Can you imagine if your local highway was owned by walmart? it's ridiculous.
Great idea--let the govt alphabet agencies run the rial roads, just like the mails, the DMVs, the interstate highways--all pinnacles of efficiency and service. Grow up.
The tracks aren't in a "pathetic state". You understand the FRA has standards that must be followed and maintained for the speed a class 1 wants for a particular section of track, right? Each class 1 railroad literally spends billions each year JUST in maintenance. Could most class 1 rail yards use some maintenance? Sure, most of those are limited to 15 mph or less and the derailments are relatively minor. You think railroads WANT derailments? You should see what they spend per year JUST on railroad contractors alone.
It may be an obvious solution, but the fact is that track related issues are not the primary cause of derailments. That notion was propagated in this video but is untrue.
@@TheNemosdaddy I take it you haven't been on a TGV, or a Shinkansen, or even an average commuter train in a European country that actually invests in rail infrastructure...
The slow-motion bumpy-ass ride of passenger trains here in the States is medieval in comparison.
so there are 141 derailments a month? 4 or so per day? every day of the year? bullshit
My town of Chesterton, Indiana has 78 freight trains going through town DAILY. I live about a block from the tracks. Thinking of moving as this red state is very unconcerned.
Sounds like it would be a major disruption is something were to happen to that track!
bye
The stuff the blue states are doing scares me more.
Bye Commie! Go where everyone is equally poor.
Really could never understand why so many US towns are built on and around freight railways, in many cases with them literally running down main street.
Just checked, if a train with chemicals derail and spill into the fox river, it could theoretically flow all the way into the Gulf of Mexico.
And don't forget the Gulf Stream - it would go all the way to England.
Good god, that’s gonna be disastrous
dont worry though, the water will be completely safe. in fact, you should drink more of it
@@halflife2fun haha, good one, I’m not drinking that
Nobody would notice. The Gulf is full of oil from all the platform drilling rigs. It would fit right in. Fresh Gulf shrimp, anyone?
The last car on a train near my town derailed. The man in his car parked "safely" behind the large arm was killed instantly. I have always wondered how that happened..
I was just talking about this like an hour ago. I’m sure most people have. Good video
The state of repair for the mechanical and maintenance of way of the the railroads is easily explained by the three little letters R - I - F: reduction in force.
Very interesting and INFORMATIVE !
GOOD JOB = WELL DONE! of digging into it and finding out things! That most people don't know and have no idea about! Thank You!!.
2:38 less competition = worse service. 2:53 100+ Class 1 RRs > 7 > now 6 3:05 largely under hedge fund control ☹️😡 3:32 shareholder payouts up dramatically; accidents also up. 3:49 anonymous railcar inspector describes situation 4:46 used to quickly remove damaged cars from service 5:18 triple-whammy against rail safety: consolidation, deregulation, greedy hedge fund control 6:06 San Diego County Goat Canyon Trestle largest wooden trestle in the world