Railroad interviews

The leading headlines of the [local] papers were given to the subjects of the convention and to interviews with the scientists. Collisions of the atoms displaced automobile and railroad collisions slaying of bacteria and undesirable insects completely overshadowed similar activities among humankind pictures of scientists ornamented the pages hitherto deco-... 

The regional line manager that we interviewed acknowledged the safety challenges associated with limited resources and inheriting deteriorated track spun off from major railroads. However, he seemed to indicate that these challenges caused short-line management to be more proactive and to use their limited resources more efficiently. He also noted ... 

Despite the more than 60% decline in railroad employment since passage of the Staggers Act, most of our respondents in management denied any significant increase in workloads for laborers. We were told that while the production numbers were up, workloads have probably not increased much because the work has become less labor-intensive. Moreover, virtually all of the managers that we interviewed stated that the employment cuts after... 

Support for this last lesson comes from several sources. Independent review of FRA operations by the GAO has repeatedly drawn attention to the ineffectiveness of pursuing individual defects and has recommended that the FRA move toward conducting more in-depth investigations of the safety-management practices of railroads who appear to offer deficient levels of safety. Interviews with managers of short-line railroads in Railway Age suggest that they find the educational seminars and advice offered by the FRA in cooperation with ASLRRA to be more informative and useful than a stack of violation notices written by a FRA inspector during a random visit. 

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