Heart & soul of industrial hygiene & toxicology - RR & safety

I’ve waited a lifetime to tell this story; it won’t be long now

By my chapter 12 we have the Belgians relocated to Kansas City, first to farms and later to Preservation, there’s been a race at the Million Dollar Speedway and we’ve leapfrogged a few decades to spring 1979. Racer & Andy acquire Missouri-Pacific railroad jobs, being posted to Philadelphia where they pick up some weed spray equipment.

Ch11 – Weeds, trees & turf. On June’s first Tuesday Racer and Andy departed Kansas City’s Union Station as the MissouriPacific’s newest maintenance-of-way - M-O-W employees, passing through northern Missouri and Illinois aboard Amtrak’s Chief. A second unrecalled passenger train transported them from Chicago to Philadelphia, putting them at its 30th Street Station too late for a hotel room but too early for even yard office coffee, a time and setting that could be described using a single word, miserable.

Slowly walking to the meeting site, they still arrived ahead of the hour when other attendees rolled out of beds or plugged in percolators. Execution viewing rooms could be cheerier than safety meetings. Their Monday topic was new to Racer and Andy but familiar to more seasoned attendees, review of Rule G. While no one present disputed Rule G’s prohibition of alcohol anywhere on railroad property, attendees oddly signed in using a complimentary Latrobe Brewery pen. The meeting lasted forty-five minutes, its conclusion heralded by muffled sounds of multiple pocket watches, being scooped from overall pockets.

As the Missouri-Pacific pair left the meeting, a foreman took Racer aside. A warm, welcoming individual, he introduced himself as Vito, inquiring what they had been hired to do and where they would work. Racer summed identically to his encounter with Val, Weed Spray Engineer – MoPac. Vito then provided a curious warning.

Everything here wants to kill you; it’s all big and heavy.

Most sources of everything from noise to industrial chemicals can be represented by points or clusters or even dots but sources belonging to railroads are best represented by lines. Mile-plus trains will soon-to-be-piloted by a single crew member, an engineer. Railroad Workers United campaigns for preservation of 2person crews, an engineer and a conductor and I agree with them. Unfortunately, the Federal Railway Administration sees matters differently, supporting singleperson crews. How about Railroad – and Safety?

Much later in my tale Racer reflects on his experiences, on the railroad-and-off, finding reason to wonder whether there are other Vito’s out there…

Ch26 – Agent orange train. Combinations of broken road surfaces, rough grade crossings and poor

illumination impeded Racer’s progress, eventually forcing him to walk. Near the final crossing he witnessed a young brakeman directing switch engine movements, wondering if that man had benefitted from a safety advocate like Vito.

Credit to JoCoLB Larry Byers trainorders.com

Ch9 – Uphill from preservation. Viewed endwise, railroad ties measure seven inches deep and nine inches wide, each nearly seven feet long. At dawn each Saturday, TJ’s crew activated big vacuum-side compressors that infused creosote into one hundred ton lots of rail cross ties. Each year of the 70’s nearly three thousand train derailments occurred, catastrophic events sometimes originating in rotted or otherwise defective ties. Equipment-on-the-ground was a dreaded expression, referring to a train’s derailment. Thus Preservation residents held tie treaters and their work in high regard. If decay was the ties’ enemy, vacuum-impregnated creosote was their ally.

Similar to some other odd expressions in Million Dollar Speedway, this one appears halfway through my tale and then again on the final page, following another short, lightly-explained declaration that “Words sometimes fail.” The intricate language and expressions of safety and risk scream for more thoughtful attention than have been afforded them.

EVERY DAY ON THE RAILROAD WAS THE SAME. THEN AGAIN, THEY WERE DIFFERENT.