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Oil train safety rule delayed by one year

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has delayed by nearly a year a plan to boost safety standards for the type of rail car involved in a fiery explosion that killed at least 47 people in Canada this month. Officials began work on the rule more than a year before an oil trai [...]

Driver of Spanish train was talking on phone

The driver of a Spanish train that derailed and killed 79 people was talking on the phone when the train flew off a tight curve, court documents show. In the moments before the derailment, Garzon received a call on his work phone from Spain’s national train company Renf [...]

Federal judge sides with KCS on cameras

In an opinion released July 25, the U.S. District Court in Shreveport, La., ruled that the decision by Kansas City Southern Railway to install two inward-facing cameras in the cabs of its locomotives presents a “minor” dispute under the Railway Labor Act, paving the way for t [...]

Railroad executive puzzled by police raid

Ed Burkhardt, chairman of the board of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, says he doesn’t know why police raided the company’s Quebec offices on Thursday, insisting that the company has been cooperating with police and federal authorites. “If they a [...]

Conductor alerts officials to fire at school

GALVA, Kansas — The crew of a passing freight train is getting the credit for spotting an overnight fire that damaged a middle school in central Kansas. Authorities believe lightning started the fire at Canton-Galva Middle School. Damage was confined to the gymnasium, where f [...]

Crashes traumatic for railroad employees

Crashes are traumatic for both victims and the railroad employees who witness the tragedies unfold. An average freight train has 100 cars and at least two engines, a total package weighing as much as 6,000 tons. Traveling at 55 mph, such a train takes at least a mile to come [...]

Around the UTU, June 2013

Local 202, Denver, Colo. The members of this local are asking for donations to assist the family of 40-year member John D. Velasquez, whose wife, Louise, is in need of liver and kidney transplants. She is suffering from non-alcoholic, fatty liver disease. “John was planning o [...]

Spain train derailment kills 78

At least 78 people have been killed in the passenger train derailment in northwestern Spain on July 24. More than 140 were hurt, 36 seriously, after all eight carriages of the Madrid to Ferrol train came off the tracks near Santiago de Compostela. Read the complete story at B [...]