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Although rail laid in 1966 showed an increase, preliminary 1967 figures indicated a sharp cutback again to 400,000 tons.

The fact that crossties now have a longer life and that heavier rail is being used does not account for the considerable reduction in these operations. Deferred maintenance (or undermaintenance) is the result. These three tables in themselves raise the question whether the railroads can and are maintaining their tracks and bridges in a safe condition. All evidence points to a negative answer.

It is my opinion that the standards for roadway safety now being maintained by many railroads are marginal and border on the dangerous.

The proposed legislation would give the Department of Transportation the needed authority it does not have at the present time to investigate the condition of railroad tracks and structures from the standpoint of safety.

ADEQUATE FLAGGING PROTECTION FOR EMPLOYEES WORKING UNDER TRAFFIC

The imperative need to furnish protection from moving trains to employees working on tracks and bridges is so obvious as to need little elaboration. Yet in many instances railroads are not furnishing this protection, and where this dangerous deficiency exists there is no corrective action that can be taken by the Department of Transportation. It can only investigate after an accident occurs, and its recommendations have no authority.

Approaching trains are often obscured by brush or trees along the right-of-way, by curves, by rain, fog, falling or blowing snow, or similar conditions. Men absorbed in their work can become oblivious to outside distractions. The noise they create when they are in operation completely drowns out the whistle or other warning sounds of an approaching train.

In the earlier days of the railroads, the use of a flagman to protect men working under traffic was a universal practice. The advent of mechanization, as I have outlined above, has made it even more necessary that the safety practices be improved and continued. Yet with the passing years this important safety feature has been more evident in the breach than in the observance.

It is true that many carriers still have in their rules and instructions provisions for the assignment of flagmen to be on the lookout for trains. At times it is most difficult, however, if not impossible, to carry out these rules under present-day conditions. The skeletonizing of forces and the modern concept of maintenance operations makes the assignment of a flagman difficult in many instances.

The difficulty becomes an impossibility where the crew has been reduced to the foreman and one, two, or three men, as a flagman is to be placed in both directions. Yet these unprotected small crews are in as much danger while working under traffic as a large crew would be.

As an example of the present situation, in the early part of 1965 three trackmen of the Northern Pacific Railway were killed while working near Longview, Wash., by a freight train backing around a

curve.

Reports indicated that they were working on the track with pneumatic tools which apparently prevented them from hearing the train. Obviously, these men were not given the protection that could have. prevented this tragedy. The Interstate Commerce Commission inves

tigated the accident, but it had only the authority to announce its findings.

The proposed legislation would give the Department of Transportation the needed authority to take action designed to prevent the recurrence of accidents of this nature on this railroad and other carriers.

A recent development is the attempt of various carriers to use radios as a means of communication. A radio can be a very temperamental and unreliable device, particularly when it is on a moving vehicle, but a leading radio and television company stated in an announcement that "maintenance-of-way crews are warned in advance of oncoming trains from both directions by a new radio control repeater system" which it had developed.

We have strongly protested the use of radios for this purpose, but the Department of Transportation has no authority to act in this area. In a letter dated May 22, 1964, addressed to former Congressman John B. Bennett, Chairman Abe McGregor Goff of the Interstate Commerce Commission said:

While the Interstate Commerce Commission administers a number of laws intended to promote the safety of railroad employes, none of those statutes confers upon the Commission any jurisdiction over operating rules and practices of the carriers.

Accordingly, in the absence of appropriate legislation by the Congress the Commission is without authority to take any action to require the discontinuance of the use of the radio as a means of protection in connection with track construction or maintenance, and to require instead the use of the usual flagging procedures in effect in the railroad industry.

I am unable at this time to express any opinion as to the relative merits of these two methods of protection.

That is the end of Mr. Goff's statement in his letter for former Congressman John Bennett.

What Commissioner Goff said, in effect, is that the railroads are left very much to their own devices, and that under the present law there is no governmental agency empowered to investigate and to take steps to control this unsafe practice.

Where radio is used for communication, there is generally a significant absence of specific carrier rules governing its use. In some instances, every employee who has access to the facilities is left very much on his own as to what use is to be made of them.

Perhaps the most serious defect in the use of radio for warning purposes is illustrated by an accident which occurred January 2, 1964, in the vicinity of Yampai, Ariz., on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (ICC Railroad Accident Investigation Report No. 4006).

This accident involved a collision between a train and a mechanized maintenance-of-way repair crew, and resulted in the death of four maintenance-of-way employees.

The crew involved consisted of nine men. The equipment in use included an on-track tie-tamping machine weighing about 15,000 pounds and 16 feet 2 inches in length, and an on-track combination power jack and tie-tamping machine weighing about 8,700 pounds and 11 feet 5 inches in length.

Under favorable conditions, equipment of this kind can be placed on or removed from the track in approximately 10 minutes. Under unfavorable conditions, a longer period of time is required. Under rules and regulations of most railroad companies, equipment of this kind is not to be placed on a track in service unless flagging protection is afforded in both directions.

The A.T. & S.F. Railway is one of the carriers that has attempted to provide protection through the use of radio equipment furnished to maintenance-of-way crews and the personnel of approaching trains. The noise of the machinery in a mechanized crew seriously interferes with any discussion, including communications transmitted by radio. In this particular instance, radio reception was described as generally poor in the area of the accident. This was due to the terrain, which included very deep rock cuts together with mineral deposits in the vicinity.

In addition, evidence given at the hearing held following this accident indicated that the verbal instructions issued in connection with the use of radio equipment were conflicting and subject to misunderstanding. Radio communication as a means of protection failed completely to prevent this accident.

There have been other instances of accidents resulting from the use of radio communication similar to the foregoing case. Attempts of the railroads to use radios for protective purposes demand thorough investigation by a governmental agency, as do other current flagging practices of the carriers.

The proposed legislation would authorize the Department of Transportation to investigate and issue such rules and regulations as it determined were needed with respect to adequate protection for employees at work under traffic.

For many years the traditional method of transporting maintenance-of-way employees, tools, and materials from the headquarters of the crew to and from the point of work was by a track motor car; that is, a vehicle powered by a gasoline motor with flanged wheels to travel over the rails. In recent years, however, the trend has been more and more to replace track motor cars with trucks traveling over the public highways. We can envisage the time, if the present trend continues, where trucks may supplant track motor cars almost entirely except in territories where the terrain is such that the use of trucks is not feasible.

It is not unusual practice for tools, materials, equipment, and even gasoline to be hauled in the same truck as the employees. In some instances, track motor cars or push cars are also loaded into the truck for transportation from one rail point to another. A number of safety aspects, therefore, are involved in the use of highway trucks.

1. The truck should be suitable for the transportation of passengers. (Accident reports reveal various instances in which employees riding in trucks have been killed or injured when they were thrown over the low railing of an open truck when the truck lurched suddenly.)

2. Employees should not be transported in the same truck as tools, equipment, or material.

3. Combustibles should not be hauled in the same truck as the employees.

4. The space occupied by the employees should be covered, heated, and lighted.

5. There should be means of communication between the passengers and the driver.

6. Suitable seats or benches, securely fastened, should be provided so that the employees will not have to stand or sit on the floor.

7. The truck should contain a first-aid kit and a fire extinguisher. 8. The underfooting in the truck should be safe (not slippery from materials hauled, et cetera).

9. A safe means of ingress and egress from the passenger compartment should be provided, and there should be handholds and slipproof ladder.

10. The truck should be maintained in mechanically safe condition. I do not think it can be denied that each of the foregoing points is a necessary requirement for safety. I can say quite frankly, however, that is a rare instance when a truck being used by a railroad in maintenance-of-way service even approaches these minimum safe standards. Laws governing the transportation of railroad employees on the public highways have been sought in the various States, but this legislation has been strongly opposed by the railroads and most State legislatures have failed to act.

In only five States-Michigan, Oregon, Utah, Oklahoma, and Missouri-do we have laws of this nature at the present time; and even these laws are entirely inadequate to remedy the situation. Failure of the States to act in this area has made necessary the passage of the proposed legislation which would give the Department of Transportation the needed authority in this field of safety.

To illustrate the extent to which maintenance-of-way trucks are involved in accidents, I call your attention to table 2, submitted with this statement, which summarizes the information contained on accident reporting form T, filed by the carriers with the Department of Transportation and formerly with the ICC. It will be noted from this analysis that in many instances the accident occurred because one of the 10 standards previously listed was violated.

The need is clear for national rules and regulations to insure the safe transportation of employees by the railroads.

The proposed legislation which you are now considering is a great improvement over the existing laws which relate to railroad safety. However, before the brotherhoods could support such legislation, a number of revisions must be made. We are very concerned about several particular consequences of the application of the proposed legislation. Probably the most important problems are the possibility that the legislation may limit the functions of, or the negotiations under, the Railway Labor Act, and that the Secretary's authority may extend to activities involving or growing out of a labor dispute. We fought many years, long and hard, in order to get these protections and rights, and we could never support any legislation which might limit or interfere with them. I might add that I do not think it is the intention of this legislation to extend to activities covered by the Railway Labor Act or to prohibit strikes, but this intention requires some redrafting.

We are also very concerned over section 4 of the bill which provides for the automatic supersession of State law after a period of 2 years. One of the major legislative objectives of the maintenance of way employees during the past 20 years has been to secure effective State laws covering the safety of track motorcars and other maintenance of way equipment.

I am pleased to say that in virtually all of our States there are laws providing numerous track motorcar safety protections. With the chairman's permission I would like to insert into the record at the end of my testimony a compilation of all of these State laws.

This is the document I am referring to, Mr. Chairman. It contains each of the laws in each of the States in the continental United States,

that we have been able to secure as a result of our activities in the State legislatures, and I would ask that I have the privilege of inserting this in the record at the end of my testimony.

The CHAIRMAN. We will either have it in the record, or in the committee files. We will determine that later.

(The document referred to was placed in committee files.)

Mr. CROTTY. If section 4 of the bill were enacted in its present form, all of these State laws would be repealed without any assurance that the existing safety protections would be continued.

Millions of dollars and untold man-hours, as I have stated, have been invested by the maintenance of way employees in persuading State legislatures of the need to enact these laws, and they should not be tampered with until and unless there are minimum Federal standards in existence which are at least equal to the State laws to be superseded.

Railroad workers should be entirely excluded from the sanctions of the proposed legislation. Otherwise, the worker will be placed in the dilemma of either carrying out a command of his superior, which may be illegal, or find himself subject to disciplinary action because of his failure to obey his superior. Such a burden should not be placed upon the worker, but rather upon those directly responsible for such violations the railroads and their management personnel.

In addition, there are numerous procedural protections absent from the proposed legislation. These suggested procedural changes were discussed in detail by one of our prior witnesses, Mr. Chesser.

For the reasons I have given, the railroad employees represented by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees endorse the proposed legislation with the suggested amendments proposed on behalf of the Railway Labor Executives' Association and its constituent organizations.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to present this statement and for your attention to my remarks. (The documents referred to follow :)

TABLE 1-MAINTENANCE OF WAY HOURS OF SERVICE PER MILE OF ROAD OPERATED AND AVERAGE MILES OF ROAD OPERATED PER EMPLOYEE-DESIGNATED CLASSES, SELECTED YEARS, CLASS I RAILWAYS IN THE UNITED STATES

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2 Combined total of section foreman, section men, extra gang foreman, and extra gang men.

1922 equals 100.

Source: Transport statistics in the United States, ICC and M-300.

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