Transportation News

Visit the digital archive of the SMART-TD News (PDFs)

Incremental progress on hot wheel detection’s not enough

As kids, the term “Hot Wheels” brought to mind good times playing with tricked-out toy cars and letting your imagination take it from there. As railroad professionals, this term goes from warm and fuzzy childhood memories to the gut-churning stuff of nightmares. Railroaders a [...]

When technology failed, our NS members rose up during outage

On August 28, the Norfolk Southern rail network’s technological infrastructure failed. Crews couldn’t print off their pre-departure paperwork at the terminals. No one was able to report their hours of service. Many were unable to verify the consists of their trains. Emails we [...]

Fringe benefit review shows substantial gains for rail workers

Upwards of 70% of UPS employees are represented by the Teamsters Union. In one of the most prominent news stories of the summer, the Teamsters and UPS workers fought the good fight against the corporation and made large gains in their levels of pay and company-provided fringe [...]

Additional information out for October TD meeting in Toledo

The initial schedule and information about the upcoming SMART Transportation Division Regional Training Seminar (RTS) set for Oct. 3 through 6, 2023, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Toledo, Ohio, has been released and is available through the SMART app or via PDF. Learning sessio [...]

SMART-TD and labor win latest battle against carriers, AAR

The SMART Transportation Division would like to thank all our members who have been filling out the safety forms when PTC doesn’t work as intended, when long trains make handheld radios useless, when signals drop out and when a DP units fail and there’s a mile of cars between [...]

Missouri Local 933 helps lead caboose restoration 

The city of Pleasant Hill, Missouri, requested help from their community to restore a historic Missouri Pacific caboose on display in the town square. In response to this need for civic involvement, SMART-TD Local 933 out of Jefferson City answered the call and has partnered [...]

Fundraiser established to help former local officer in cancer battle 

John Trembczynski, vice local chairperson of LCA 623/IHB, and former three-term Local President of Local 1381 (Hammond, Ind.) has been forced into early retirement due to a series of bouts with cancer.   Brother Trembcynski has been on the railroad as a conductor an [...]