More than six months before February’s toxic train derailment, a union representing Norfolk Southern Corp. employees in Ohio warned federal regulators that the railroad repeatedly disregarded its own safety rules for screening trains.
A formal complaint to the Federal Railroad Administration alleged the railroad had disregarded internal company rules requiring trains hauling hazardous materials be stopped and inspected in certain cases where track-side sensors, known as defect detectors, aren’t working properly. Those same sensors are a focus in the investigation into the Feb. 3 wreck.
“Apparently crews are being told to operate as described in the complaint almost everywhere in Ohio,” Clyde Whitaker, Ohio state legislative director for the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, wrote in the complaint. Norfolk Southern “is taking risks with employee and public safety and it must stop.” A copy of the July complaint, which hasn’t previously been reported, was viewed by Bloomberg News.
