The charred and burned remains of a train that derailed between Bosler and Rock River in August are still sitting in the weeds near the place where its cars went off the rails, strewing thousands of packages in their wake, and sparking a fire.
The derailment was late in the afternoon, due to what retired railroad worker and former legislator Stan Blake called a “sun kink.”
That’s a warp in the track, caused by the heat of the sun beating down on the tracks. They can happen rather quickly, and it’s hard for a train to slow down and miss them.
“They don’t like to call it a sun kink,” Blake said. “They call it a thermal misalignment.”
Sun kinks are just one of the things that can go wrong in the railroad system, causing a derailment. Typically, track inspectors are watching out for these as they travel the rails in Wyoming, along with its opposite condition, “pull aparts.”
Those are places where the rails have pulled away from each other, typically when it’s cold, at a weak point, like bolted connections.
“Track inspectors will have a truck, you’ll see a truck going down the rails,” Blake said. “And that’s usually a track inspector.”
Recent Green River Layoffs Part Of Larger Issue
Track inspectors are just one of the many cogs in the safety wheel that keeps railway cars moving across the tracks across Wyoming. Another of those cogs has been carmen, whose job is to look at all the inbound railcars for problems, particularly the wheels.
Every railway car wheel has a raised rim called flange on the inner side, which keeps them on the track. That flange is thin, at just 1.12 inches, and it’s subject to regular wear and tear as a car rides the rails. When the flanges get too thin, cars can derail, so that’s one of many problems that carmen are looking for.
Wyoming just lost a number of its carmen at the Green River station, the latest in workforce reductions that industry experts have testified to Congress totals around 30%. The steady downward march of workforce that’s got eyeballs on the railway system is something that Blake believes could lead to more train derailments in the future.
“They eliminated 17 carmen positions,” Blake told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday morning. “And I’ve heard there really wasn’t much notice. It was, ‘you’ve got ‘X’ amount of time to clean out your lockers and you’re done.’”
The Problems With More Automation
Blake was a switchman for 31 years with Union Pacific and was also in charge of safety across Wyoming when he served as state director for the SMART Transportation Union, which represents about 125,000 active and retired transportation employees, including railroad workers.
Switchmen, he said, are typically not trained in what to look for when it comes to railcar problems. They also already have a slate of jobs that keep them very busy.
“I think that the railroad is really counting on technology across the system,” Blake said. “They have a hot box detector, for example, which can tell if a wheel is hot, and they have a dragging equipment detector which can spot something hanging 244 cars back.”
There are also systems such as the Track Geometry Measurement Systems to perform automated track inspection, or ATI.
But these automated systems sometimes fail to spot problems, Blake said, and they don’t always transmit their data properly. He’s concerned that fewer human inspections means problems that technology has missed will be spotted less and less often.
“It could definitely cause more accidents,” Blake said. “There’s just a ton of different things that can go wrong.”
Union Pacific did not respond to specific questions from Cowboy State Daily about what it’s doing to assure safety on the railroad lines that run through Wyoming.
Union Pacific’s Senior Manager of Communications Mike Jaixen said the elimination of carmen at Green River and at Roper, Utah, is meant to “align heavy locomotive and rail car repairs at locations that enhance freight fluidity.”
“Light repairs, fueling and inspections will continue at Green River and Roper,” he added. “And all impacted individuals are being offered other employment opportunities across the railroad.”
Layoffs Come At A Time Of Change
Union Pacific’s layoffs come at a time when railroad companies have sought a number of waivers involving federal railway safety regulations, including one that would cut human track inspections by 75%.
The Association of American Railroads Association said the changes they've requested will enhance safety, and that track inspection regulations, which haven't been changed since 1971, need an update.
"Combining ATI with visual inspections enhances safety — full stop," AAR Assistant Vice President Jessica Kahanek told Cowboy State Daily. "The waiver request would empower railroads to position technology and skilled employees where each can be most effective."
In a pilot study, ATI reported identifying 200 defects for each found through visual inspection, Kahanek added.
"In some test programs, it has led to over a 90% reduction in unprotected FRA main track defects — making a clear and compelling case for expanding ATI to enhance both the frequency and effectiveness of track inspections."
Labor groups, meanwhile, have opposed these changes, saying they will increase accidents, including train derailments, something Blake agrees with.
“The Federal Railroad Administration has already gutted their inspectors,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “You have less federal presence, and now fewer inspections all around.”
Blake said the automated tools the railroads want to rely on do improve safety when they’re used as adjuncts to human inspections. But don’t catch everything and aren’t ready to become the primary means of ensuring human life and safety.
In the waiver sought by the Association of American Railroads, companies would also get up to 72 hours to address defects, rather than taking any immediate actions.
Human inspectors, meanwhile, can exercise judgement to make immediate repairs or choose to slow or stop trains if a serious problem is detected.
Irreparable Damage To People, Communities
The Association of American Railroads has asked to waive more than 80 railroad safety regulations, all at a time when the industry has dramatically reduced workforce levels by more than 30%, according to Tony Cardwell, president of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division, which represents track inspectors and other rail workers.
Cardwell testified to Congress in June that the move to waive so many safety regulations in favor of automated systems is jumping the gun on what these systems can do.
“ATI (Automatic Track Inspection) cannot replace what a human track inspector does because it only inspects track alignment, elevation, and gauge,” Cardwell told the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials. “It does not inspect for track defects that cause a majority of track-caused derailments.”
The FRA has required railroads to look for 23 different track defects, Cardwell added, which is far more than an ATI can detect.
“Track defects are the second leading cause of rail derailments after human error,” he said. “So it is essential to ensure that railroad tracks are free from defects.”
ATI has been used since the 1970s to augment human inspection of railroads, Cardwell acknowledged, and is good at spotting track geometry defects — just as its name would imply.
But those account for just six of the 23 defects that FRA has required railroads to inspect.
“ATI cannot detect defects like broken rails, rotten ties, washouts where the track has washed away, or obstructions in the right of way,” he said. “ATI can only detect 26% of what a human track inspector can detect and, therefore, cannot replace human inspections. Moreover, ATI only detects defects, while track inspectors identify problems before they become defects.”
To think otherwise, is a delusion waiting to become a “disaster, Cardwell added.
“What AAR seeks in their safety waiver could effectively result in passenger trains carrying people or freight trains carrying hazardous materials running over defective tracks,” Cardwell said. “The consequences of allowing a defect to go unaddressed for up to three days could be yet another derailment that kills or severely injures people and causes irreparable damage to communities near railroad tracks.”
Too Many Wyoming Towns At Risk
Many, many towns in Wyoming have railroads running through them, Blake said, and many of those towns have limited resources for responding to a train derailment, particularly if that derailment involves hazardous materials.
“Union Pacific goes all the way across, it more or less follows I-80 at Granger,” he said. “It cuts up through Kemmerer, Cokeville, then into Idaho on up to Pocatello, and also up on the coal line. They go up through Bill and on up to Gillette.”
That’s just Union Pacific, Blake added. That doesn’t cover the towns that BNSF goes through.
“Several years ago there was a train derailment out there by Hanna,” Blake said. “And not that long ago, I don’t know how many years ago, they had an oil train that burst into flames because of a sun kink and that was just east of Rock Springs.”
In many communities, railways run right through busy business districts.
“The railroad splits Rock Springs right in half,” Blake said. “As does Evanston a little bit. Laramie, not as much, but there are restaurants right there in Laramie, right next to the tracks.”
While trains have to slow down when they reach city limits, they’re still going at speeds that would be scary in a derailment situation.
“The speed through Rock Springs used to be 45 miles an hour,” he said. “Maybe it might be 40 mph now, but that’s still cooking. I mean, thank goodness I never was on a trail that derailed like that. It would be so scary.”
Wyoming has seen a number of train derailments in the past five years.
There was a fiery crash 4 miles east of Rock Springs in 2020, with 39 cars derailed, nine of which were either damaged or caught fire.
Cheyenne had a 12-car train derailment in 2023, while 21 coal cars derailed in Lusk that same year. This year, at least 15 Union Pacific railcars derailed near Walcott Junction in central Carbon County, of which at least three were tankers, in addition to the Bosler derailment.
That’s just a few of the train derailments that have happened in Wyoming in the last five years.
“These things are happening all over the place, and it’s frustrating,” Blake said. “It’s scary.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
