Woes at Railroad : SP's New Optimism Derailed (2024)

SAN BERNARDINO—

Like his brethren on the railroad, engineer Albin Szulc was shaken when he got word one May morning that a Southern Pacific freight train had derailed here, killing four people. But he was by no means surprised.

Szulc, 42, can only theorize about why the ill-fated freight became a runaway and jumped the tracks at the foot of the steep Cajon Pass grade. But he is sure that conditions dangerously ripe for such wrecks have dogged the railroad for half a decade.

A Southern Pacific employee since 1971, Szulc says spotty maintenance, insufficient training and plummeting morale have turned the once mighty railroad into a carrier derisively dubbed “Surely Pathetic” by some industry experts.

Confirms Suspicion

“This (accident) just confirmed my suspicion that if we don’t do something about these problems, we’re in for trouble,” Szulc said. “They run trains with equipment that doesn’t function properly . . . and there is no consistent, repeated follow-up training to ensure these engineers are proficient at their job.”

While no firm answers have yet emerged to questions about how the 69-car train got away from its crew while descending the treacherous grade into San Bernardino, evidence unearthed so far mirrors concerns voiced by many railroad employees as well as outsiders who track the freight line.

Southern Pacific, these critics say, is a railroad plagued by problems.

In a series of interviews, veteran Southern Pacific employees, industry analysts and transportation consultants agreed that the derailment was merely the latest wound suffered by a railroad beset in recent years by financial losses, a tainted maintenance record and a sagging spirit among workers.

“Since 1983, (Southern Pacific) has operated like a disabled ship,” concluded Isabel Benham, a New York railroad consultant, in a report last year on the carrier’s financial woes.

Ironically, the San Bernardino wreck--one of the most destructive train disasters in recent history--comes as Southern Pacific is embarking on a course designed to polish its sullied image and retrieve the respect and business that have ebbed away in recent years.

Purchased in October by Denver-based Rio Grande Industries Inc., Southern Pacific has pledged to improve service to disgruntled shippers, expand and modernize its oft-maligned fleet of locomotives and sweeten unusually bitter relations between management and workers.

Railroad spokesmen staunchly deny that even at its darkest days Southern Pacific ever allowed maintenance to deteriorate to a point where safety was at stake, and they point with pride to recent changes.

In just eight months, many employees say, Southern Pacific has become an entirely new place to work, and optimism had been running deep--until May 12.

On that day, the freight train bound for Long Beach derailed, leaving crewmen Everett Crown and Alan Riess crushed in a fist of mangled steel. Their deaths, colleagues say, provided an ugly reminder that problems remain.

“It was sort of like a sock in the stomach,” one veteran trainman said of the crash. “Things were looking brighter and everyone was feeling so much better and then, pow!”

The 1980s have not been kind to the Southern Pacific Transportation Co. Once the acknowledged king of the rails in the West, Southern Pacific saw its star tumble in this decade, a period marked by mounting competition and uncertainty over the freight line’s corporate fate.

Unlike many other large railroads, which can count on a steady cargo like coal, Southern Pacific’s traffic base has proven more vulnerable to economic slumps and competition from trucking, analysts say. Lumber, for example, is a major product hauled on its routes out of the Pacific Northwest, and the carrier is thus at risk during dips in construction.

“The railroads that do well have reliable, profitable traffic like coal and concentrate it heavily along certain routes,” said Theodore E. Keeler, a UC Berkeley economist who wrote a book about the railroad industry for the Brookings Institution. “Southern Pacific just hasn’t had as many of the profitable routes and commodities as some of its competitors.”

Compounding these troubles has been an extended bureaucratic stalemate over the railroad’s ownership.

In 1983, Southern Pacific’s corporate parent merged with the owner of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. The newly formed Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corp. then sought to merge its rail lines, but that bid was rejected in 1986 by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which concluded that the combination would be “anti-competitive.” A subsequent appeal also was denied, and the ICC ultimately ordered that one of the two railroads be sold.

It was a painful period for Southern Pacific: “There was tremendous demoralization among employees. It was almost debilitating,” company spokesman Jerry Pera said.

With its future uncertain, Southern Pacific had little motivation to expand, modernize or innovate, and the railroad’s financial performance was “lackluster” at best, said Benham, the New York consultant. In the three years that the merger effort was afoot, Southern Pacific lost about 10% of its revenues--or $200 million--annually.

To survive the tough times, the railroad launched a massive cost-cutting program. Miles and miles of track were closed, hundreds of freight cars and locomotives were retired, and 5,000 jobs were cut through early retirement and an employee buyout plan that offered workers a one-time payment to leave.

The railroad also shut down the bulk of its outlying maintenance yards, consolidating repair work at four major facilities--Roseville and Colton in California, Houston and Pine Bluff, Ark.

Pera said the move represented a “centralization effort” permitted because of the greater efficiency of today’s locomotives: “They don’t need attention every 300 miles like they used to,” he said.

But many engineers disagree, saying the powerful machines they pilot are frequently in disrepair because they do not receive the consistent mechanical care they once did.

“In the maintenance area, they just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, and we feel it,” said Indio engineer Ray Brown, a Southern Pacific employee since 1961. “Twice in one month recently, they sent me power (locomotives) that I rejected because they had no brakes or some other kind of mechanical malfunction.”

Bennie Loudermilk, a Bakersfield engineer since 1981, said locomotives used to be checked “on a daily basis by pipe fitters, electricians and machinists. Then they closed the roundhouse (maintenance yard) in Bakersfield, and now they just let the equipment run down until someone complains.”

It is not at all uncommon, Szulc noted, for an engineer to handle trains that lack a full complement of dynamic brakes, which are used along with an air pressure braking system to control speed. This was one of the problems investigators say may have contributed to the May 12 derailment.

Other engineers say they often are asked to run locomotives that lack working speedometers.

“You just don’t figure on having all your equipment functioning,” Szulc said. “That’s the norm and a responsible engineer just operates the train accordingly.”

Under such conditions, engineers say they must essentially double as mechanics, remaining constantly on the lookout for problems, and in some cases fixing things themselves.

“I changed my own brake shoes the other day,” said one Los Angeles-area engineer who, like many others interviewed, asked not to be named. “I could get fired for doing that. But I knew if I waited for a mechanic, I would’ve needed rock salt because the city would have frozen over.”

Loudermilk, 34, said he and fellow engineers keep a close eye on the service department because of their belief that shoddy maintenance decreases their chances of climbing safely from the cab at the end of the day.

“One time, I wrote up a work report on a bad locomotive I took to Colton and I kept a copy for myself,” said Loudermilk, who serves as secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’ local in Bakersfield.

“The next day, I got the same power with the same problems. I radioed the roundhouse and they said if the engineer who brought it in had told them about the trouble, they would have taken care of it. Well, you can imagine their reaction when I pulled out my work report.

“These are the things you have to do to protect yourself, and I’ll tell you, it really drives up the stress level.”

The Federal Railroad Administration deploys inspectors to ensure compliance with its numerous maintenance and operational regulations. But with 327 officials policing 450 railroads and 220,000 miles of track, many workers say the inspectors are spread too thin to make much of a difference.

Moreover, although the Federal Railroad Administration visits are supposed to be a surprise, engineers say that word somehow gets out, and Southern Pacific reacts nimbly, often concealing defective equipment until an inspector departs.

“The FRA (Federal Railroad Administration) can come in and literally shut down a terminal, so the company will simply move the bad power around. They hide it,” Brown said.

Southern Pacific spokesman Pera could not confirm that such maneuvering occurs, but he said it is possible. A superintendent “who feels he could be shut down” by an inspector might hold a defective locomotive out of town until a mechanic can be sent out to correct the problem, he said.

Nonetheless, Pera contends, the company views the Federal Railroad Administration as a formidable force that has a major effect on the railroad. And over the last five years Southern Pacific has paid more than $1.2 million in fines for federal violations. That sum exceeds by $200,000 fines paid during the same period by the nation’s largest rail line, the Union Pacific Railroad Co., which operates 50% more miles of routes than Southern Pacific.

Transportation consultants and shippers familiar with Southern Pacific say evidence of its decline became readily apparent about five years ago. About the same time, jokes about the sorry condition of the company’s locomotives became popular.

“A favorite was, ‘Here comes an SP train. Let’s see, it’s got 10 locomotives, so it must have actually needed four,” said one Southern California consultant who has done work for the railroad and asked to remain anonymous. “They always had a lot of dead junk sitting around. And the equipment just never shined like the Santa Fe’s does.”

Southern Pacific hotly disputes that mechanical service has lapsed during the rocky decade. Deferred maintenance “is a practice that’s been around since 1864. But did we put off maintenance to the detriment of a safe railroad? Certainly not,” said Robert Taggert, vice president for public affairs.

Pera noted that Southern Pacific recently won the E. H. Harriman Memorial Award for employee safety for the third year in a row. The award is based on the ratio of employee injuries per miles traveled.

And William Loftus, executive director of the Federal Railroad Administration in Washington, said Southern Pacific is “no better or worse” than competing railroads in terms of the frequency of accidents and casualties.

“There is nothing extraordinary about their record,” Loftus said, although in 1987--the most recent year for which figures were available--the company’s proportion of equipment and mechanical failures was a bit higher than the industry average.

But Federal Railroad Administration safety records have been called into question by government investigators.

Noting that “FRA uses injury and accident reports submitted by the railroads,” a Government Accounting Office report published in April said the agency “has little assurance that its injury and accident data is reliable” because of inaccuracies or gaps in the information submitted by the railroads.

While they are defensive of their company’s performance, even Southern Pacific officials concede that life at that railroad has changed dramatically since its purchase eight months ago by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz.

Anschutz, using wealth amassed in the oil business, bought Southern Pacific for $1.8 billion and merged it with his tiny line, the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Co. The combined carrier, Southern Pacific Lines, became the nation’s fifth-largest railroad with service in 15 states and 15,000 miles of routes.

Almost immediately, Southern Pacific took on a new look and feel.

An aggressive marketing campaign, using the slogan “The Spirit That Won the West,” was launched to woo back customers alienated by the unreliability that many say plagued the line in recent years. Shippers across the country were entertained by Anschutz himself on a special train pulled by a steam locomotive to celebratory events.

To win back inter-city business seized by truckers, the railroad introduced a new group of trains noted for their punctuality and attractive freight price. And a prominent stretch of track between Oregon and Nevada was reopened, offering expanded service.

“This company has undergone a 180-degree change for the better,” Taggart said. “Philip Anschutz has completely turned us around.”

Those who run the trains--bitter after years under what many described as a ruthless us-against-them managerial policy--quickly became swept up in the excitement, relieved to finally be rescued from limbo.

“It was like we suddenly had a home,” said engineer Ronnie Lee, who travels routes between Bakersfield and Roseville. “Morale shot up, maintenance improved too. And this man Anschutz really seems to care. I hear he just shows up at different facilities and talks one on one with the men.

“We were all holding our heads a little higher. . . . And then we lost Alan and Everett.”

When engineer Frank Holland crested the 4,200-foot Cajon Pass grade around 8 a.m. on May 12, preparing his train for the long ride down into San Bernardino, his speed was a whisker under 30 m.p.h.--just about right for the 6,100 tons he was told he was pulling.

Holland, an engineer since 1986, was undoubtedly tired, having started his shift 11 hours earlier. But as a relative newcomer to the steep hill, he most likely was on the edge of his seat in the train’s small, noisy cab.

Before long, Holland knew something was wrong: His train was picking up speed, and he lacked the braking power to slow it.

About halfway down the 27-mile descent, the “helper engineer” near the rear of the train engaged the emergency brakes. But it was no use. The freight was a runaway, careening at 90 m.p.h. down the mountainside.

Shortly before the lead locomotive entered the fateful bend where the train would derail, Holland turned to his conductor: “We’re going to die on that curve,” he said.

Moments later, Holland climbed from a pile of grotesquely twisted steel--alive but with a collapsed lung and broken bones. Conductor Everett Crown and brakeman Alan Riess were not so lucky, and two children in one of several homes flattened by the runaway also were killed.

The National Transportation Safety Board is months away from revealing what caused the freight to barrel out of control and jump the tracks. But evidence collected so far shows the train weighed nearly 3,000 tons more than its crew was told, a factor that could be key because engineers base their speed and braking calculations on weight.

Missing Braking Power

In addition, tests show that because only three of his six locomotives had working dynamic brakes, Holland had just half the braking power needed to control the train at 30 m.p.h. And the NTSB is studying why Holland was unaware that he could make a certain maneuver that might have slowed the train or caused it to derail before reaching populated areas.

Southern Pacific officials have wasted no time responding to the wreck. A flurry of new safety orders have been issued to employees, emphasizing rules governing braking, communication among crewmen and other aspects of train handling. In some districts, company officials have attended meetings with union leaders and members concerned about the accident and ongoing safety problems.

But many workers insist that the railroad needs to do more, and one area criticized heavily is training.

Currently, an engineer in training takes 60 rides on a locomotive as an observer before completing a three-week program of classroom work and practice on a simulator, a device that replicates the behavior of a locomotive to test a student’s handling skills. If they pass, beginners then are accompanied in the field by an instructor until he determines they are qualified.

While Brown says the simulator and certification process provide “a good foundation,” he and others lament that there is virtually no follow-up training designed to ensure that engineers remain adept at maneuvering their powerful machines.

Company officials maintain that their program of “efficiency testing”--in which officers secretly monitor engineers for compliance with signals, speed limits and other rules--keeps workers abreast of the rules. But some employees disagree, saying that function, while necessary, is disciplinarian in nature and does not address the need for refresher training.

“When these young guys come out of that simulator with a score of 98, they’re all puffed up, thinking they know everything,” Brown said. “Well, they don’t. And our equipment is constantly changing. We need a standardized program to keep people sharp.”

In fact, Brown and Szulc designed just such a program and deployed it on routes between Colton and Yuma between 1985 and 1987. Its creators say the program produced reductions in accidents and better compliance with the rules. But Brown and Szulc said the program was killed by union leaders, in part because of fears that information gathered during training sessions might be turned over to company officials for disciplinary use.

As the introspection that accompanies a tragedy continues among those who knew and worked with Crown and Riess, one feeling seems to surface most often. Bob Ricou, an engineer for 17 years, put it this way.

“This wreck is something that will live in the memory of all us forever. The important thing now is to get these problems corrected so that these men didn’t die in vain.”