NTSB, FRA intensify safety reviews of Norfolk Southern operations

The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Railroad Administration have announced they will pursue special reviews of Norfolk Southern Railway's safety practices following a series of recent train derailments and yesterday's death of an NS conductor.

The NTSB yesterday said it will open a "special investigation" into NS and urged the company to immediately review its safety practices and make changes that will improve the safety of its operations and employees.

Since December 2021, NTSB has launched investigations into five significant accidents involving NS, including the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio; the March 4 derailment of an NS train near Springfield, Ohio; and yesterday, the death of an NS conductor who was killed in an incident between a dump truck and an NS train in Cleveland, Ohio.

The other incidents include:

• a Dec. 8, 2021, accident in which an employee for National Salvage and Service Corp. assigned to work with an NS team replacing track was killed when the operator of a spike machine reversed direction and struck the employee in Reed, Pennsylvania; and

• a Dec. 13, 2022, accident in which an NS trainee conductor was killed and another conductor was injured when the lead locomotive of an NS train struck a steel angle iron protruding from a gondola car on another NS train stopped on an adjacent track in Bessemer, Alabama.

As part of the special investigation, the NTSB also will review the Oct. 28, 2022, NS derailment in Sandusky, Ohio.

"The NTSB is concerned that several organizational factors may be involved in the accidents, including safety culture," board officials said in a press release.

Meanwhile, the FRA announced late yesterday it will conduct a 60-day supplemental safety assessment of NS operations.

"After a series of derailments and the death of one of its workers, we are initiating this further supplemental safety review of Norfolk Southern, while also calling on Norfolk Southern to act urgently to improve its focus on safety so the company can begin earning back the trust of the public and its employees,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a press release.

The FRA's safety team will review the findings of a 2022 NS system audit and revisit FRA’s recommendations and the scope of the railroad’s responses.

In a prepared statement issued after the NS conductor was killed in Cleveland, NS President and CEO Alan Shaw said he called together the NS management team to "emphasize the urgency of finding new solutions" to the railroad's safety issues. Starting today, NS "will hold safety stand-down briefings reaching every employee" across the NS network, he said.

"Moving forward, we are going to rebuild our safety culture from the ground up," Shaw said. "We are going to invest more in safety. This is not who we are, it is not acceptable, and it will not continue."