The effected citizens need to file a massive lawsuit against NS for negligence. That derailment could have absolutely been prevented with proper safety inspections. This is a direct result of not having enough people to do the jobs safely.
It’s not just NS it is literally the entire US freight rail network. To briefly explain railroads used to be over-managed then the government realized they messed up then they removed like 99% of the regulations and then railroads just got worse and worse every declare since the 80s.
How about stating the cause as: Inexperienced crew due to very low retention rates of employees who are supervised by managers that have drank the Koolaid and do no have the ability to think and further hampered by a country that cannot supply enough job seekers that can pass a drug test
Or insufficient pay to make a job with uncomfortable working conditions desirable (leading to high turn over), and executives and managers who lack the autonomy to do anything other than unquestioningly follow dictates from fund managers (i.e. activist shareholders) who know nothing about railway operations.
NS seems to have derailments quite often, it doesn't seem like they take repairs and preventative maintenance into consideration very much. Please let me know if I'm wrong. Great coverage though, I'm hooked on your videos and I just subscribed!
For years they was the recipient of the Harriman safety award but I'm not sure if it's still around. Back around early to mid 2000's CSX was the one having all the derailment.
Thank you for your excellent reporting and quality informative videos. NS has a history of not properly cleaning up the destruction they created. I live in Portage County about ten minutes away from the NS derailment that happened 11/4. That incident still has not been cleared away. There is still bridge damage and road closure in Sandusky from a derailment in October After damaging infrastructure in Pittsburgh they never completed repairs. I believe the Pittsburgh Port Authority sent them an invoice for nearly 4 million. The fines and penalties need to be more severe.
Pittsburgher here, can confirm. Nearly 5 years after the derailment here NS is *still* trying to avoid footing the bill for the damage they did to Port Authority’s light rail tracks. Taxpayers have had to foot the bill for NS’s ineptitude.
Thanks for following and updated cause of accident. East Palestine glad see President of NS show up make a presence but article says lawyer said not take money 💸 from NS .
Nice and informative video Charlie. I live just how in depth you go with your information and your narration. Keep it up buddy. Hope to see you in Athens!
Great video! Very clear monologue and superb video production value. I’m sure I would not learn as much from a 4:13 minute broadcast done by a professional news outlet. Very polished production.
The $10K fine is trivial compared to the cost of cleanup and repairs to the damaged rails and rail cars. It signifies the regulator thinks NS did a good but not quite perfect cleanup job. Ultimately, we are the ones who pay for it all. The cost just gets marked up and passed on by every layer between NS and the end consumer who ultimately pays. Let's say it cost NS $500K, which after several layers of markup, is a few million dollars by the time it gets to a few hundred million consumers who each pay a few cents each for this derailment.
I see the derailment that occurred on October 8th 2022 in Sandusky Ohio has had a few positive developments since the derailment and horrible after effects in Palestine, Ohio. An overpass bridge destroyed in the Sandusky, Ohio derailment has now been totally repaired including the road fixed that went under the overpass bridge. Sandusky has been trying to get this done since October 2022 with no help forthcoming despite many pleas for help with the cost of the repairs to Norfolk Southern. I guess all the negative publicity Norfolk Southern is getting from the East Palestine accident has helped Sandusky, Ohio.
NS could have saved 10G if they would have cleaned it up quicker and used mitigation measures to prevent soybeans from getting to the water source. Love your style!
It's always tricky to judge the cleanup decisions. I would assume that vac trucks were used to suck up the bulk material and some small percentage was left behind in the mud or it had already floated away. The guys in charge of the cleanup may have decided to stop rather than do more harm by digging up miles of creek. I've been in those situations and typically the company coordinates and communicates with the regulators. A $10K fine is like getting and "A" on your clean up but you failed to get and "A+" BTW - I worked a derailment in TX back in the 80's. A boxcar caught fire and set other cars on fire. The mess was scattered out for 10 miles - it was US mail and it was all junk mail - millions of junk mail items. I'll bet half burned, 10% blew away and 40% got picked up by the Santa Fe crew of Navajo Indians that did the clean up - what mess when it all goes wrong.
Huge Greed and Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) are the two (2) Biggest Factors in an Obvious Uptick in Train Derailments by Class I Railroads. 🤪👎
Accidents happen, sure.. But i think these multi-billion dollar rail corps need to maintain their right of way and equipment much better. It seems like little reinvestment into infrastructure is an after thought if they can get their shareholders a few extra cents. 'penny smart pound foolish'
I don't seem to remember this many derailments 15-20 years ago? Think maybe a full audit of what regulations and policies have been revised or neglected and get things back to the way they were.
You are right. The fines aren’t near hi enough. As with all major rail carriers if the initial fines are really costly for non compliance, the clean up and the rumination will start asap. A $10,000 fine is like a dollar bill to a major carrier. They will make any excuse to delay the cost of cleanup.
And yet you never hear the EPD going after the city of Atlanta for discharging thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the hooch yet every night about 2 or 3 AM the overflow alarm sounds at their water treatment facility and moments later there's sludge and bits of toilet paper going right down towards Camp Creek Pkwy and onward to the Gulf.
I wish the States that NS runs uncovered coal trains through would take NS to court somehow. They pollute countless little towns with coal dust trains, and also their former hometown Norfolk for decades. This long term coal dust pollution comes from the antiquated uncovered rotary dumpers that load coal onto ships. It's not like residents haven't protested time and time again.
What I wonder about is how the amount of soybeans necc to alter oxygen levels got into a creek that is so far from the derailment location. I went to the location right after this happened and thrte were big vacuum trucks sucking up tje soybeans. I even grabbed a small sample of the soybeans for some reason. Flat Creek is like half mile sway at lesst. Maybe rain runoff moved soybeans to creek? If anyone knows how please let me know.
The NS executives spend $10k on dinner. Need to add a few more zeros to that fine. Truly disgusting. There needs to be more accountability with these railroad 'accidents'.
Damn. Gainesville is my hometown. Wish I would have known all this. For one, Flat Creek has always been a polluted creek and absolutely nothing unusual for fish to die and D.O. Levels to be very low. The Riverkeeper group is mainly an environmental whacko group. Secondly, I would have cleaned up those soybeans for my deer and chickens to eat for free.
$10K fine should be PER DAY til the area is restored 100% at NSC's expense. How many other companies PAY for studies on how to "save" the cost of 1 worker per train and how to reduce the cost of safety inspections. I work in logistics optimization & know that all factors must be considered, even if human suffering is ignored. BTW, $100M won't be enough for East Palestine.
These companies could care less look at the oil company out in Alaska they didn't care they'll just write the check these long trains are wrong you have to pay to play safety is a choice not a mistake shame on them I get the railroad my dad worked for them it brings product from point a to point b well done
Well, the size of a fine isn't dictated by the net worth of the offender, so rather than compare the $10k to NSC's revenue, consider that it's for killing DOZENS of fish. That's some pretty expensive fish.
Here's an unpopular idea. Let's slow freight trains to 50 mph. That way when a derailment happens, it won't be so severe as the Ohio crash was. That way bearings don't get quite so hot under a loaded car, and is subject to a catastrophic failure and major derailment. From a safety standpoint, there's no reason for a 2.5 mile long train to run that fast. And if we look at this from a physics perspective, trains that long create their own wind tunnel if you will, and not much air gets to the bearings to be able to cool themselves off under loaded weight. Just an idea, and I'm sure it will be very unpopular.
Trains through EP already run at 50 MPH. Slowing them down to that speed wouldn’t do much. It would make more sense for the railroads to, I don’t know, maintain their infrastructure/rolling stock and stop cutting corners.
I'm not disputing the fine, but the EPD says the oxygen levels were harmed by the soybeans. How do they know the soybeans did that? Maybe the levels were low when the accicent occurred? Just wondering.
Now, NS needs to pay for the cleanup in East Palestine. They've been let off too easily lately.
Yea, the wreck is pretty bad. I wouldn't expect them to be let off.
The explosion was not from the wreck itself. The train was purposely blown up by a government appointed group.
The effected citizens need to file a massive lawsuit against NS for negligence. That derailment could have absolutely been prevented with proper safety inspections. This is a direct result of not having enough people to do the jobs safely.
@@OfficialRailFanTay_Productions 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂this was all bidens doing! His besties are all CEOs from this company…….you’ll see! Toots…
Nice profile icon Mr. Sir Topham hat. I hope you're not a POS CEO like that NS murderer.
Something is really going down on the NS system…
It’s not just NS it is literally the entire US freight rail network. To briefly explain railroads used to be over-managed then the government realized they messed up then they removed like 99% of the regulations and then railroads just got worse and worse every declare since the 80s.
After working for ns for 27 years I could write a book !!
It's called "profit"
Conrail should make is return
@@uprailfan73 railroads need to be nationalized again
Very professional, as usual, Charlie. Good production values. Thanks!
Another great video!!
It quite obvious NS was negligent because the wheel was spotted miles from the derailment with a problem.
At 50MPH, how long was this before failure? Heat sensors do not see, they only sense heat.
$10,000 is literally pocket lint to them
This was a great report thank you, looking forward see more of your channel.
How about stating the cause as: Inexperienced crew due to very low retention rates of employees who are supervised by managers that have drank the Koolaid and do no have the ability to think and further hampered by a country that cannot supply enough job seekers that can pass a drug test
Or insufficient pay to make a job with uncomfortable working conditions desirable (leading to high turn over), and executives and managers who lack the autonomy to do anything other than unquestioningly follow dictates from fund managers (i.e. activist shareholders) who know nothing about railway operations.
Drug tests are a real problem, and they have had to relax their bar of entry to get anyone through class.
NS seems to have derailments quite often, it doesn't seem like they take repairs and preventative maintenance into consideration very much. Please let me know if I'm wrong. Great coverage though, I'm hooked on your videos and I just subscribed!
They’re just the first ones to spill chemicals and make national news this is pretty much a problem across the industry
For years they was the recipient of the Harriman safety award but I'm not sure if it's still around. Back around early to mid 2000's CSX was the one having all the derailment.
They are too busy paying record dividends for their top shareholders like Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, JP Morgan and Lazard.
Yes, you are wrong. A bearing has no bearing on track maintenance.
Gainesville to downtown Atlanta in about an hour is a pipe dream unless it’s 3am. 😂
Thank you for your excellent reporting and quality informative videos.
NS has a history of not properly cleaning up the destruction they created.
I live in Portage County about ten minutes away from the NS derailment that happened 11/4. That incident still has not been cleared away.
There is still bridge damage and road closure in Sandusky from a derailment in October
After damaging infrastructure in Pittsburgh they never completed repairs. I believe the Pittsburgh Port Authority sent them an invoice for nearly 4 million.
The fines and penalties need to be more severe.
Pittsburgher here, can confirm. Nearly 5 years after the derailment here NS is *still* trying to avoid footing the bill for the damage they did to Port Authority’s light rail tracks. Taxpayers have had to foot the bill for NS’s ineptitude.
$10K is just a slap on the wrist!
Thanks for following and updated cause of accident. East Palestine glad see President of NS show up make a presence but article says lawyer said not take money 💸 from NS .
Nice and informative video Charlie. I live just how in depth you go with your information and your narration. Keep it up buddy. Hope to see you in Athens!
Great video! Very clear monologue and superb video production value. I’m sure I would not learn as much from a 4:13 minute broadcast done by a professional news outlet. Very polished production.
I agree!
Wouldn't be surprised if the top brass at NS were going through headache meds like mad.
You think this is bad, how about airline execs whose $250,000 a year salaried pilots can't stop hitting other jets or landing on top of them!
The $10K fine is trivial compared to the cost of cleanup and repairs to the damaged rails and rail cars. It signifies the regulator thinks NS did a good but not quite perfect cleanup job. Ultimately, we are the ones who pay for it all. The cost just gets marked up and passed on by every layer between NS and the end consumer who ultimately pays. Let's say it cost NS $500K, which after several layers of markup, is a few million dollars by the time it gets to a few hundred million consumers who each pay a few cents each for this derailment.
Fines are supposed to hurt enough to motivate companies to do better. 10k fine is NOTHING to NS.
I see the derailment that occurred on October 8th 2022 in Sandusky Ohio has had a few positive developments since the derailment and horrible after effects in Palestine, Ohio. An overpass bridge destroyed in the Sandusky, Ohio derailment has now been totally repaired including the road fixed that went under the overpass bridge. Sandusky has been trying to get this done since October 2022 with no help forthcoming despite many pleas for help with the cost of the repairs to Norfolk Southern. I guess all the negative publicity Norfolk Southern is getting from the East Palestine accident has helped Sandusky, Ohio.
NS could have saved 10G if they would have cleaned it up quicker and used mitigation measures to prevent soybeans from getting to the water source.
Love your style!
Or rushing the job might have lead to greater damage and a greater fine.
Or they didn't have the resources in the area to do it correctly. It takes time to gather a crew and drive to the site.
Wait the railroad investigates themselves and then reports it to the FRA? Why doesn't the FRA have investigators that go onto site?
My guess is lobbying
I love when you upload it makes my day!
It's always tricky to judge the cleanup decisions. I would assume that vac trucks were used to suck up the bulk material and some small percentage was left behind in the mud or it had already floated away. The guys in charge of the cleanup may have decided to stop rather than do more harm by digging up miles of creek. I've been in those situations and typically the company coordinates and communicates with the regulators. A $10K fine is like getting and "A" on your clean up but you failed to get and "A+" BTW - I worked a derailment in TX back in the 80's. A boxcar caught fire and set other cars on fire. The mess was scattered out for 10 miles - it was US mail and it was all junk mail - millions of junk mail items. I'll bet half burned, 10% blew away and 40% got picked up by the Santa Fe crew of Navajo Indians that did the clean up - what mess when it all goes wrong.
Huge Greed and Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) are the two (2) Biggest Factors in an Obvious Uptick in Train Derailments by Class I Railroads. 🤪👎
I was railfanning that day in Gainesville. I remember hearing something weird up north by Cargill.
How can the railroads investigate themselves 🤦Congress needs to do something
Accidents happen, sure.. But i think these multi-billion dollar rail corps need to maintain their right of way and equipment much better. It seems like little reinvestment into infrastructure is an after thought if they can get their shareholders a few extra cents. 'penny smart pound foolish'
20 years ago, I was on an Amtrak train somewhere in the swamps of Southeast Georgia and saw a derailment that took place a week earlier.
I don't seem to remember this many derailments 15-20 years ago? Think maybe a full audit of what regulations and policies have been revised or neglected and get things back to the way they were.
Maybe Conrail is making a come back if ns goes under
You are right. The fines aren’t near hi enough. As with all major rail carriers if the initial fines are really costly for non compliance, the clean up and the rumination will start asap. A $10,000 fine is like a dollar bill to a major carrier. They will make any excuse to delay the cost of cleanup.
Nice review.
And yet you never hear the EPD going after the city of Atlanta for discharging thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the hooch yet every night about 2 or 3 AM the overflow alarm sounds at their water treatment facility and moments later there's sludge and bits of toilet paper going right down towards Camp Creek Pkwy and onward to the Gulf.
That reminds me of the movie "The East"
I'm so fed up with what these corporations get away with!
I was there when it happened. I was getting loaded @ cargill.
Amazing that the cars are still laying on the old CSX siding
$10,000 fines that's nothingto big corporations like N S , the authorities need to increase these fines to at least $10,,000,000 !
Imagine they start another steam program to cover the costs 😭💀
I'm not seeing a river in any of the drone shots, so how did 5hey cause issues in stream?
Clean up is subjective. Pretty soon it will become drone railroading.
I wish the States that NS runs uncovered coal trains through would take NS to court somehow. They pollute countless little towns with coal dust trains, and also their former hometown Norfolk for decades. This long term coal dust pollution comes from the antiquated uncovered rotary dumpers that load coal onto ships. It's not like residents haven't protested time and time again.
What I wonder about is how the amount of soybeans necc to alter oxygen levels got into a creek that is so far from the derailment location. I went to the location right after this happened and thrte were big vacuum trucks sucking up tje soybeans. I even grabbed a small sample of the soybeans for some reason. Flat Creek is like half mile sway at lesst. Maybe rain runoff moved soybeans to creek? If anyone knows how please let me know.
Did NS break a mirror on the 13th of Friday cuz they have bad luck?
The NS executives spend $10k on dinner. Need to add a few more zeros to that fine. Truly disgusting. There needs to be more accountability with these railroad 'accidents'.
Should have been $100k for each car derailed as a minimum.
10 grand does nothing!!! But the tax paying Americans will pay for all these railroads!!! Not right!!
Damn. Gainesville is my hometown. Wish I would have known all this. For one, Flat Creek has always been a polluted creek and absolutely nothing unusual for fish to die and D.O. Levels to be very low. The Riverkeeper group is mainly an environmental whacko group. Secondly, I would have cleaned up those soybeans for my deer and chickens to eat for free.
What the hell is going on with NS
You understand NS is an acronym do you not ? Means never Satisfied .
NS out here making the former Penn Central look like well managed railroad.
they still have to clean up the mess in ohio. as people say they cant live in there homes .from toxic fumes.
$10K fine should be PER DAY til the area is restored 100% at NSC's expense. How many other companies PAY for studies on how to "save" the cost of 1 worker per train and how to reduce the cost of safety inspections. I work in logistics optimization & know that all factors must be considered, even if human suffering is ignored. BTW, $100M won't be enough for East Palestine.
Nationalize RR infrastructure; implement robust defect detector standards, incl calibration, testing protocols, strict realtime alert response; manned hazmat response caboose on hazmat trains; toughest hazmat railcar standards; prohibit stock buybacks...
You know what was really bad? There were two crewmen in all the trains, and neither one made a single bit of difference. Here we go for one man crews!
$10,000 is pocket change for them
$10k thats how much they make on one car in profit. It should be a $10 Million Fine!
These companies could care less look at the oil company out in Alaska they didn't care they'll just write the check these long trains are wrong you have to pay to play safety is a choice not a mistake shame on them I get the railroad my dad worked for them it brings product from point a to point b well done
Ns is ready not prepared in train derailments
I hope NS gets charged for the East Palastine accident
Its all over the news
Thay trying to put a bullet train between Dallas and Houston lol
Good video
I think there losing there very good safety track record at the top of the company they need to find a very good public relations information person
NS Is going Downhill
Norfolk Southern, we are guaranteed to derail anything and everything
Industrialization is a sin
The apathy is bewildering
Scam for Insurance
Lets haul all of this crap by highway and see how everybody likes it.
Wow
Interesting
Its called corporate greed… that spill means absolutely nothing to them. A tiny drop in the bucket, and any fine is nothing.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Well, the size of a fine isn't dictated by the net worth of the offender, so rather than compare the $10k to NSC's revenue, consider that it's for killing DOZENS of fish. That's some pretty expensive fish.
there are something fishy with the American railroads don't support them
Literally almost everything you buy or use daily was probably on a train at some point and time.
@@freedomfan4272 there is almost a derailment in the usa twice a week
64
It’s all making sense as to the price of eggs they did this on purpose
Slow the trains to 10 mph
Bruh. Shouldn’t cargill be fined? It is their line right? Also fish aren’t that important. Either way, you can’t fine someone for such a small event.
I think we found a NS burner account here.
If a NS employee failed to line the switch correctly then why would Cargill be fined?
Fish aren't important? Have you been living under the proverbial rock?
Here's an unpopular idea. Let's slow freight trains to 50 mph. That way when a derailment happens, it won't be so severe as the Ohio crash was. That way bearings don't get quite so hot under a loaded car, and is subject to a catastrophic failure and major derailment. From a safety standpoint, there's no reason for a 2.5 mile long train to run that fast. And if we look at this from a physics perspective, trains that long create their own wind tunnel if you will, and not much air gets to the bearings to be able to cool themselves off under loaded weight. Just an idea, and I'm sure it will be very unpopular.
Trains through EP already run at 50 MPH. Slowing them down to that speed wouldn’t do much. It would make more sense for the railroads to, I don’t know, maintain their infrastructure/rolling stock and stop cutting corners.
I'm not disputing the fine, but the EPD says the oxygen levels were harmed by the soybeans. How do they know the soybeans did that? Maybe the levels were low when the accicent occurred? Just wondering.
Holy crap its literally fish who cares..
Edit: this is going to start a war in the comments
Fisherman
Food?
I mean depending on what the fish were they could’ve been important to the ecosystem
Drinking water supply, birds and predators who eat the fish (Including people), people who swim in the water?
Oh, if the water is contaminated and gets used for irrigation, it gets into the food chain. Fish are the indicator that the water is bad.
10.000 dollars is like fining me a dime.