How well could the occupants of a caboose that was the 142nd car see the 23rd car?

They did catch the problem on time. The help desk operator was almost certainly following policy from on high, however that policy should have recognized that a high (increasing?) delta between detectors was just not a good omen.

1. Please read the rules carefully.
2. If your line is a common carrier and the customer's request is reasonable you do not have a choice.

Once again it comes down to bad judgment.
Makes me wonder whether or not the person manning the desk had any hands-on rail experience?

Disregard the politics of the administration, or the alleged selection of a "checkbox to check off" for the selection of our current Secretary of Transportation..................

......... but the fact remains that he is such a lousy Sec'y of Transportation--at least in the public/media's eyes--that the general public knows who he is. And for the wrong reasons.

This is something we cannot say about just about any of his predecessors. I dabble in watching and writing about the national transportation scene, and I had to struggle initially to remember who his predecessor was--or her predecessor, or HIS predecessor....... never mind the general public.

Actually I have read the rules and studied it extensively, and I interpreted them as requiring PTC on any lines that carry hazmat. What am I missing?

Over 5 million gross tons per year requires ptc

Yet again I ask why don't they just put a rubber or other low melting material hose with train air over the adapter plate. If the bearing overheats It would in turn heat up the adapter plate which would melt the hose dumping the air.

Sounds like a system that would lead to a lot of undesired emergency brake applications.

"Disregard the politics" and then go an a political rant. I think he's a fantastic Secretary of Transportation and I hope he runs for President and wins.

The sad truth is that the whole thing has now morphed into a national cluster f*** which will end up costing NS many, many millions of extra dollars.

Maybe, just maybe the big roads might want to think about taking a tiny bit of the multi millions they spend on shareholder dividends and stock buy backs and mount an effort to make friends with the first responders along their railroad whose help they need when a crisis hits???

IMHO-Ross Rowland

Defend this opinion.

Mr JC Marksbury has this right. It's a Hell of a lot safer to let the engineer handle the air, rather than big hole the train without warning, with the application initiated in the middle of the consist.

Remember, they passed two defect detector warnings on orders from the "defect detector help desk". By the time the crew was told to stop and inspect their train, it was too late.

Where is this information coming from? If it's actual fact that's a major point of the story.

Mr CZ, If I may offer a suggestion, it would be to read the post by Brother Paul Woodring about midway down in the first page of this thread. He has been out there a lot more recently than I have, and I'm comfortable accepting the detailed version of events he presented. I also heard substantially the same thing yesterday from a non railroader friend, who had gotten his information from the McNeil-Lehr report on PBS.

As you say, that's a major point of this story. Another might be to ask when railroads started allowing this monkey business of "Defect Detector Help Desks"? Or perhaps we should be asking when the FRA started allowing it.