While watching this video, at about the 3:50 mark, I noticed the shop staff not only wearing hard hats, but safety harnesses clipped to the locomotive as well. Has anyone seen safety harnesses used in steam locomotive maintenance before?

https://youtu.be/LW35DuY-BFQ

Very common now days in North America. The law requires it in most places above a certain height.

Yeah, I saw them being used by the guys in our office taking down the company Christmas tree last week!

I believe Federal OSHA requires fall protection for heights above 6 feet. There may be more requirements applied in states that have their own additional OSHA regulations.

Good thing he's wearing that harness because whatever that object is that he's standing on certainly doesn't look very stable!

I think the lack of a code compliant handrail/guardrail with toe board also plays into that as well.

We try to follow OSHA guidelines and use safety harnesses whenever working over 6 feet off the ground. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of things on top of a boiler to tie off to. We typically tie off on the handrails, but you have to check your lanyard and make sure it's not so long that you will hit the ground before becoming fully extended.

One of our corporate risk auditors suggested we add handrails on the outside of the running boards so that we don't have to worry about safety harnesses. I've been resisting that due to the drastic change in appearance of the historic equipment.

We also require safety harnesses for confined space entry, to be used in the event of extraction of an unconscious victim. A photo of myself taken during an internal boiler inspection that appeared in the New York Times a few years ago got me in a little trouble from corporate. My hard hat was missing (it's hard to keep on your head when working in a prone position) and so were my safety glasses (they tend to fog up in a humid environment). But I did have my safety harness.

Eric Hadder
CMO
Grand Canyon Railway

Yea, there's a prototype for that

Does scaffolding eliminate the requirement for harnesses?

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Many years ago (before the current team took over so no attacks please) I remember seeing safety tethers as the crew was serving the 844 during the layover in Cheyenne. I’m surprised I haven’t seen this practice more as museums and tourist railways don’t really need any extra liability.

The Disney railroads no longer allow their operating crews to walk onto the tender to fill it with water, instead they must use a metal staircase, with rails of course, and fill from the side of the tender. At Disneyland, they are using a hose instead of the water tower currently, while at Disney world they were still able to use the water tower. Some of you old timers may say this is silly, but it helps prevent falls and potential serious lawsuits and liability. What is your operation doing to eliminate liability of employee and volunteer safety?

Harnesses.... Haha

Back in the day my Father as a locomotive fireman was up on the tank filling it with water.

The engineer kinda forgot that he was up there and moved the loco forward....

Dad "hugged" the water spout with all his might and mentioned calmly (haha) to the hogger that backing up the loco might be a good idea.....

But seriously harness are a good idea, I do work on test towers that are 40-60 feet off the ground, no going near the edge unless properly hooked up.

Kelly,

I sat thru a enlightening presentation by a member of the California State OSHA at the American Shortline Railroad Association 3 or 4 years ago. There was a lot of gray area in the MoW side of things, and in the Operating side of things. However they (the presenter and the railroad host ) both seemed pretty sure that almost all shop operations fall under OSHA. Evidently they seem to draw the line at the moving train and the track.

While there were rumors of OSHA inspectors giving railroads a hard time, no one in the group reported such events. It seems that OSHA has bigger fish to fry than short line railroads.

The mechanical guys (car men) at the UP yard I work at can't even get up on the nose of our switch engine to change a headlight or anything else. A month ago, we rec'd a switch engine on which it turned out the air line that feeds the horn was broke off the bottom of the horn mount.
They couldn't get up there to fix that, either. Had to put it in a consist and send it across the system to a shop where they had fall arrest.
There is a camera pointed right out the windshield, so we can't just "sneak" up there and fix things ourselves, like we used to... now, there's a camera inside that will catch you when you slip a sheet of paper in front of the outward facing camera lens, as was former practice.

OK, same location, but in this video, this fellow is using torches without eye protection, at about 3:30

https://youtu.be/wZXQuVwMju0