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FEATURE

The caboose:
UTU fighting;
to maintain

a vital part

of rail safety

By SEAN GRIFFIN
Remember Katy, the little red caboose? If
you have young children, you might be
familiar with the children’s story but other-
Wise it’s just something out of the distant
past.
And Canadian National and Canadian

- Pacific would like you to think of the
_ Caboose as something from the past as they

proceed with their campaign to replace the
caboose and its crew with an electronic
monitoring device known in the industry as
an “end-of-train unit” (ETU). They hope to
create the public. impression that the
caboose is nothing more than a relic from
the railroading past which has outlived its
usefulness and must now give way to tech-
nology and progress.

But the fact is that in an era of mile-long
freight trains and the transport of danger-
ous commodities, the caboose — and,
more important the “tail-end” train crew it
Carries — is probably more vital to railway
safty now than it was in the days of steam
transport.

_The caboose crew carries out some 3
vital functions in monitoring freight trains,
according to Paul Lawrence, legislative
representative for Local 701 of the United
Transportation Union (UTU) and secretary

_ of the union’s joint caboose committee. The

electronic ETU which is supposed to take
over has only one function. At best, with
optional equipment, that can be extended to
two. ;

The UTU will be putting its case before
the Railway Transport committee of the
Canadian Transport Commission when it
Opens hearings in the Hotel Vancouver Jan.
14 into the application by CN and CP to test
cabooseless trains.

_ The union, backed by a number of muni-
cipal councils which will also be intervening
at the hearings, is calling on the commission
to deny the application, arguing that it is
unsafe to run cabooseless trains, even test
trains, and the tests would prove nothing in
any event.

The hearings are a major irritant for
Canada’s two national railways since they
had sought last spring to begin the phased
Temoval of cabooses from trains and
launched an application to the Railway
Transport Committee Apr. 9 for approval.
Three days later, the companies served
notice on the UTU to negotiate a material
change in the collective agreement.

The first snag for CN and CP came in the
form of a decision by David Kates of the
Canadian Railway Office of Arbitration
who ruled Sept. 28 that the material change
Sought by the companies was “premature”
since the RTC had yet to rule on removing
cabooses.

Later, under pressure from the UTU and
municipal councils concerned about rail
safety, the RTC announced a series of four
public hearings and announced that they
would be limited to the issue of field testing
of cabooseless trains and would not
decide — yet — the issue of caboose re-
moval.

Hearings have already been conducted in
Hull and Moncton. Another is scheduled
for Winnipeg Jan. 9 before the committee
comes to Vancouver.

In their presentations, the two rail com-
panies have sought to emphasize the expe-
Yience in Europe and the U.S. where
cabooses are either no longer in use or are
being phased out.

But even the committee rejected the

TRIBUNE PHOTO — SEAN GRIFFIN

European example, noting that the over-
whelming majority of European trains
carry only passengers and are short.

In the U.S., the UTU also faced the same
issue two years ago — but in the shadow of
Ronald Reagan’s big stick. Pressed by the
rail corporations to eliminate cabooses and
jobs, the U.S. president, by executive order,
set up a hand-picked board which pro-
ceeded to rule that the companies could
eliminate up to 25 per cent of the cabooses
during the life of the agreement.

Since that time, however, four states have
intervened over the issue of safety and have
introduced state legislation stipulating that
freight trains must have cabooses — and
more such legislation is pending.

But even given that background, the U.S.
experience isn’t particularly useful since
U.S. trains tend to operate on shorter runs
with shorter trains.

“In this country we’ve gone in the oppo-
site direction, towards longer and longer
trains,” said Lawrence. Most of our freight
trains are 6,000 feet in length and some are
as long as 9,000 feet.”

It is that length, together with the
increased transport of such dangerous
commodities as chlorine, that has given the
caboose issue such critical importance.

The union has maintained that safety is
the paramount issue since its members have
guaranteed job security and would not be
laid off (although jobs for future members
would be lost).

And the case for safety is a compelling
one.

The caboose crew — usually a conduc-
tor and a brakeman although the latter is
being phased out through attrition — is
responsible for a variety of tasks stipulated
in the railroad’s bible, the Uniform Code of
Operating Rules. Among them are:

© Checking placement of cars to ensure
that cars carrying dangerous commodities
have not been placed in potentially disas-
trous combinations;

@ Maintaining surveillance of the train
en route for broken wheels, overheated
bearings, leaking dangerous commodities;

® Advising the “‘head-end” of the train
when the rear is clear of crossings and
uncoupling the train to cleara crossing after

it has been blocked for more than the

allowable five minutes;

© Carrying out regular visual inspection
of the track behind the train to detect
gouges in the ties, broken rails and other
problems which might indicate imminent
derailment;

Rail workers couple a caboose at CN Vancouver yard. At right, the Glenayre
Electronics end-of-train unit that CN and CP propose to replace the caboose crew.

@ Checking for excessive sway or move- .

ment which might indicate broken springs;

@ Stopping the train by the emergency
braking system if the safety of the train is in
danger.

The railways want to replace the crew
with an electronic device which fastens on
the to the last car and performs only one
major function — monitoring of brake line
pressure and relaying the information to the
head-end crew. An option available from
the manufacturer, Glenayre Electronics in
North Vancouver, adds a motion detector
which gives the crew some indication of
train movement and sway.

“Our members carry out about 30 func-
tions on a caboose and nearly all of them
involve visual inspection,” Lawrence
emphasized. “How can an end-of-train unit
do all of that?”

The UTU is currently in the process of
gathering details of various incidents in
which its members have been involved that
demonstrate potential accidents that have
been averted because of the intervention of
the caboose crew. They will be analyzed by
the union’s research department.

Lawrence cited a recent example on his
own run.

After their train emerged from the tun-
nel, the caboose crew noticed that the cars
seemed to be throwing up a lot of dust.
Stopping the train, they discovered that one
of the cars had come off the track and its
wheels were riding along the ties.

But since that particular section of track
was laid on cement ties which provide a bed
almost as smooth as the track itself, the only
thing that indicated any problem was the
dust.

“The train would probably have con-
tinued that way for another mile or so until
it came to aswitch — and then there would

have been a derailment, possibly of the -

whole train,” said Lawrence.

Would an ETU have alerted the head-
end crew to the problem? “No way,” said
Lawrence. “There was no change in the
brake pressure and even if the unit were
fitted with a motion detector, it wouldn’t
have noted any change.”

Nor is that an isolated example, the UTU
has maintained. Dozens of incidents occur
every week which, without the intervention
of the caboose crew, could turn into derail-
ments or even train disasters.

That concern has also been registered by
municipal councils, many of which have
appeared at hearings to protest the testing
of cabooseless trains and by the Federation

DIGITAIR

END OF TRAIN
MONITOR

OTHERS | GLENAYRE
Battery life

36 hrs or less | 500 hrs*

Weight of rear unit
35 Ibs or more | 19 Ibs*

Our DIGITAIR end of train monitor measures brake pipe by audible alerts where appropnate
pressure and other data at the rear of the train. Ths infor: ‘Ai elements of the system use microprocessor conto!
mation is drspiayed to the train crew in TNR 1s tet ae
Data communication between the rear of the tran and the
locomotive, uses a highly secure protocol
‘transmitted by radio at 2 watts. UHF. and
typically gives unbroken operational
continuity of indications at the head end
The end of train unit has a unique “claw
toallow it to mount on the side of a car
coupler, leaving the knuckie tree for 3
usher locomotive S
Brake pressure information and other

give sofware y
road tnals A tull tes! history 1s avaiable upon application
Buslt-n features sn the hardware
and software aliow the system to be

tested in the teld by non-technical

personne! and eases the 0b of your
‘mamtenance technician

‘Avaliable options clude an ap-
Droved marker ight and a car motion

ata 1s presented inthe locomotive using

an B digit aiphanumenc hquid crystal
display clean _-

of Canadian Municipalities which recently
ran a piece in its newsletter, Forum, query-
ing the railways’ plans.

Against the safety issue, the railways have
cited the cost of a caboose — estimated at
some $80,000 to $100,000 plus maintenance
costs — as well as the ever-ready argument
about the need to cut costs and increase
productivity.

But CN, for example, posted a record
profit of $212.3 million in 1983 — the last
full year for which figures are available —
and according to the journal, Keep Track,
the railway has a rate of productivity
improvement “unmatched by any other
railway system in North America.”

But that productivity improvement was
achieved through the steady elimination of
jobs on the railways. The same journal
noted that CN is carrying twice as much
freight as its was roughly 30 years
ago — with half as many employees.

For the railways, the issue is still
productivity — while scores of questions
about safety are glossed over or disregarded
entirely.

“We're not saying the railways shouldn’t
use the new technology — but use it in
addition to the caboose crew to add to train
safety,” Lawrence emphasized.

“The testing that the railways want won’t
prove anything — there are just too many
variables on a railway. It depends on the
weather, what kind of train, what kind of
track conditions and any of those factors
occurring together.”

Lawrence also likened the role of the
caboose crew to that of a firefighter. “Their
services might actually be needed only for a
small percentage of the time in any given
day. But who would ever suggest that they
be eliminated?”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 9, 1985 e 3