Norfolk Southern makes broad safety adjustments after third train derailment

Hours aft a 28-car Norfolk Southern train derailed Saturday successful Springfield, Ohio — the 3rd incidental for the freight railroad successful conscionable implicit a month, including the toxic catastrophe successful East Palestine, Ohio — interior emails amusement railroad officials making wide information adjustments for obstruction cars.

An interior Norfolk Southern email sent Sunday and obtained by CNBC with a clip stamp astir 11 hours aft the latest derailment indicated that Norfolk Southern was readying to trim bid magnitude successful an effort to forestall aboriginal incidents. Sources archer CNBC the email was fixed to Norfolk Southern gait managers, who are national workers successful complaint of stacking the trains.

A Norfolk Southern spokesperson told CNBC that guidance has since been updated and the bid bearer is present mandating that immoderate trains implicit 10,000 feet usage distributed power, meaning the trains would beryllium powered from respective locations crossed the magnitude of the train, not conscionable from the front. Distributed locomotives are wirelessly controlled from the starring locomotive successful some powerfulness and braking arsenic needed to assistance successful the absorption of in-train forces.

Norfolk Southern told CNBC different railroad carriers presently person this information signifier successful place.

"At Norfolk Southern, the information of our crews and the communities we service comes first," Connor Spielmaker, spokesperson for Norfolk Southern, wrote via email. "Part of enhancing safety is continuously evaluating however we run our network, and we person been examining contiguous ways to determination that extremity forward. Today, arsenic an interim step, we are ensuring each trains longer than 10,000 feet are operated with distributive power. We volition physique connected this interim alteration to thrust last policies that are due for each conception of our railroad."

Norfolk Southern told CNBC it is actively reviewing each information protocols to marque definite trains are operating appropriately crossed the network.

Still, Jeremy Ferguson, president of SMART-Transportation Division, the country's largest obstruction union, said his workers are being told the railroad volition bounds bid length.

"I person seen Norfolk Southern documents to yardmasters [Monday] greeting from the tract that is telling america trains nary longer than 10,000 feet careless of distributed power," said Ferguson. "The bid that derailed connected Saturday already had distributed power, truthful their remark to CNBC does not marque sense. I volition accidental it is simply a bully determination by Norfolk Southern to instrumentality the close steps successful reducing the bid lengths, due to the fact that the trains are excessively long."

Train lengths person been a contentious contented for railroads and labour unions successful negotiations. Railroads presently tally connected what's called precision scheduled railroading, oregon PSR, which has led to overmuch longer trains — arsenic agelong arsenic 3 miles.

Trains are stacked based connected the destination, not value distribution, with stacking of the archetypal destination astatine the caput of the bid and successful series until the past drop-off.

Railroads person redesigned bid magnitude successful an effort to usage less radical and to determination much cars with less locomotives, reducing costs and generating higher profits. But railroad unions and customers person raised information and work concerns.

The derailment successful Springfield marks the 3rd derailment since the Feb. 3 East Palestine bid disaster, successful which hazardous materials spilled.

On Feb. 16, a 135-car Norfolk Southern bid traveling from Detroit to Peru, Indiana, derailed astir 14 miles extracurricular the gait successful Romulus, Michigan. According to the investigative study for that incident, the tonnage illustration shows dense cars astatine the caput of the train, successful the mediate and successful the rear, with bare cars scattered throughout.

The derailment is inactive nether investigation, but according to 1 on-site probe report, quality mistake is apt to beryllium a ample factor: An "engineer panicked and applied dense dynamic braking which resulted successful an exigency brake exertion and derailment."

The National Transportation Safety Board announced it is sending investigators to the Springfield site.