FRA issues safety warning on close-clearance shoving movements

The Federal Railroad Administration last week issued a safety bulletin stemming from its investigation into an Aug. 6 shoving-movement accident that resulted in the death of a conductor trainee.

The bulletin calls on railroads to increase employees’ awareness of the dangers of close clearances when riding moving equipment and to make sure that when they are riding such equipment, they do so safely.

The Aug. 6 accident occurred when the conductor was riding the end of a leading intermodal car controlling the yard shoving move and a conductor trainee was riding the leading end of the second car. The move consisted of two locomotives and nine loaded intermodal well cars. Both employees were riding on the same side of the cars, according to the FRA bulletin.

The leading end of the movement traversed a slight curve and approached three parked locomotives on an adjacent track. The conductor continued the shove movement, even though the track centers were becoming increasingly narrow. The conductor was able to position himself to pass the locomotives, however the trainee was not able to pass the locomotives and received fatal crushing injuries between the car he was riding and the parked locomotives.

FRA officials noted that the conductor had less than a year of experience and had never before made a switch prior to the accident. The trainee was released from classroom training about two weeks before the accident.

In issuing the bulletin, the FRA encourages railroads to identify locations where clearance specific safety issues could occur, cover these issues during safety briefings and train and/or retrain employees as needed. The FRA may take additional actions after it concludes its investigation, the bulletin states.

Railroads should review the safety bulletin with employees and:

• Review their training programs to ensure they’re adequate to prepare employees to identify close clearance and equipment fouling situations while riding equipment. Training programs should ensure that employees overseeing trainees have enough experienced understanding of their duties to adequately impart a safety-first mindset and proper instruction to trainees they oversee;

• Identify yard and main line close-clearance tracks where employees should not ride equipment and post those findings in the railroads operating rules, special instructions and timetables. Also, railroads should consider making all permanent close/no clearances with highly visible signs;

• Employees should ride equipment only when necessary for job duties, when it’s safe to do so and after the process is discussed in a job briefing;

• Review with employees the FRA's August 2023 “Switching Operations Fatality Analysis Safety Alert.”

The FRA's entire safety bulletin issued Aug. 16 can be downloaded here. 

The Aug. 16 bulletin is the second the FRA has issued in recent weeks in response to railroad employee fatalities. In July, the FRA warned railroads to increase employees' awareness of the dangers of riding moving rail equipment, a bulletin issued in response to the agency's investigation into a fatal accident that occurred June 26. In that instance, a conductor trainee fell from a moving rail car during a shoving move and was struck and killed by rolling equipment.