Have you ever been stuck at a railroad crossing in recent years and wondered why freight trains seem so much longer now than they used to be? It’s not your imagination; they are often longer and in many cases, much heavier. There is a reason for that: the unrelenting drive of big railroads to reduce costs and increase cooperate profits. The consequences for that drive was evident in the Norfolk Southern disaster at East Palestine, Ohio.
For all the advances in safety in the last several decades, railroading can still be dangerous. It’s also a grueling way to make a good living. When you see a long freight train pass, this is what’s going on behind the scenes. The train itself could be approximately 200 cars long with a length of over two miles. Its weight could range upwards of 20,000 tons. Depending on its location, it could be moving at speeds upwards of 70 miles per hour. In the event of an emergency, it would take well over a mile to stop.
On board are two crew members, an engineer and a conductor, both of whom could likely be sleep deprived because of wildly fluctuating schedules akin to a working perpetual swing shift for days and weeks on end.
But also bear in mind that railroads are the safest and most efficient land-based form of transportation. But that safety is in perpetual peril due to corporate greed, and, unfortunately, it’s also a story that perpetually repeats itself.
