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Last week, Kansas City Southern hosted a quarterly Safety Assurance and Compliance Program (SAC-P) oversight committee meeting in Kansas City, Mo. Thirty KCS executives and department managers updated several Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) officials on the Class I's efforts to improve safety.

During the presentations:
• Vice President of Transportation Mike Chapman said KCS will replace locomotive simulators that feature a generic railroad with state-of-the-art simulators that depict the Class I's network at the Shreveport, La., training center, as well as add three mobile simulators in the field to enhance distributed power training;
• Chief Engineer of Signals and Maintenance of Way Administration Buck Jones demonstrated power-assisted switches and discussed how the department might install a few more of the devices; and
• Manager of Reporting Systems Mike Nelson provided an overview of the System Safety Meetings Database that's enabling KCS managers to streamline the process of setting local safety meetings, holding individuals accountable for their actions and tracking safety data.

Later, FRA officials discussed the administration's fatigue countermeasures and initiatives, and suggested KCS form a subcommittee to address human factor incidents.

The FRA created SAC-P to work jointly with the Class Is to find root causes and develop permanent solutions to safety issues, and focus inspections and corrective action on the most serious risk areas. A SAC-P charter since March 2004, KCS plans to hold its next SAC-P meeting May 18-19 in Shreveport.