UPDATES ADDED 3/8/23
This event is so much more significant than any of us realize. I bet you are getting tired of hearing about it. DON’T let the devil cause you to tune it out. Trust me, I am not thrilled about the time and energy I find myself compelled to dedicate to this one event. I do have other things that are pressing and require my attention. But, when GOD lead you to do something… you do it.
There are so many aspects of this event it will take years to uncover them all, or for them all to play out. But, GOD is using this News Story to bring a lot of thing to light.
Please stay with me. You have so much to gain. What is happening in OHIO is EXTEMELY RELATIVE to ALL of us. Pay attention.
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All the posts in this series:
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OHIOANS in Danger – LIES! LIES! LIES is all they get.
UPDATES ON OHIO DERAILMENT
Ohio Train Disaster – More Information
MORE BAD NEWS ON OHIO TRAIN DERAIL
OHIO NORFOLK RAIL DISASTER snarly, tangled complexity
EAST PALESTINE A VSL EXPERIMENT
DAM SURE NOT SAFE NOW!!
THIS IS A MAJOR ATTACK ON OUR FOOD SUPPLY
OHIO CHEMICAL DISASTER THAT WILL NOT STOP
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THIS TRAIN DERAILMENT OCCURRED ON FEBRUARY 3, 2023
2/1-2/3 – Mysteries of Persephone Groundhog/Imbolg day. A night requiring human sacrifice
2/2 – Candlemas (Imbolc/Imbolg) Brigid’s Day/mother goddess (bride) (blood) animal or human sacrifice
UPDATE ADDED 3/8/23
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Biden DOJ Backing Norfolk Southern in High Court Case
If the ruling favors the railroad giant, Norfolk Southern could find it easier to block pending and future lawsuits, including those from the major derailment earlier this month in East Palestine, Ohio.
Sept. 30, 2020: Presidential candidate Joe Biden campaigning by train. (Adam Schultz / Biden for President, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Norfolk Southern — the railroad giant whose train derailed and caused a toxic chemical fire in a small Ohio town earlier this month — has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 2017 lawsuit filed by a cancer-afflicted former rail worker — and the Biden administration is siding with the corporation, reporting from The Lever revealed last week.
If the high court, dominated by six right-wing justices, rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could be easier for the profitable rail carrier to block pending and future lawsuits, including from victims of the ongoing disaster in East Palestine.
Moreover, it “could create a national precedent limiting where workers and consumers can bring cases against corporations,” wrote two of the investigative outlet’s reporters, Rebecca Burns and Julia Rock.
Former Norfolk Southern worker Robert Mallory was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016. The following year, he filed a lawsuit alleging that his illness stemmed from workplace exposure to asbestos and other hazardous materials and that the rail carrier failed to provide safety equipment and other resources to ensure he was adequately protected on the job.
Although he had never worked in Pennsylvania, Mallory filed his lawsuit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas because his attorneys were from the state and “he thought he would get the fairest access to justice there,” Ashley Keller, the lawyer representing him before the Supreme Court, told The Lever.
Philadelphia City Hall, home to the Court of Common Pleas. (John Phelan, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
As Burns and Rock explained:
“Pennsylvania has what’s known as a ‘consent-by-registration’ statute —something states have had on the books since the early 19th century — which stipulates that when corporations register to do business in the state, they are also consenting to be governed by that state’s courts. Norfolk Southern asserts that being forced to defend the case in Pennsylvania would pose an undue burden, thereby violating its constitutional right to due process.
Even though Norfolk Southern owns thousands of miles of track in the Keystone State, the Philadelphia county court sided with the railroad and dismissed the case. Mallory appealed, and the case wound its way through state and federal courts before landing at the U.S. Supreme Court last year.”
The rail carrier is asking the high court “to uphold the lower court ruling, overturn Pennsylvania’s law, and restrict where corporations can be sued, upending centuries of precedent,” the journalists noted.
Eastbound Norfolk Southern freight train at Horseshoe Curve, Pennsylvania, May 10, 2016. (James St. John , CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
“If the court rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could overturn plaintiff-friendly laws on the books in states including Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia that give workers and consumers more leeway to choose where they take corporations to court — an advantage national corporations already enjoy, as they often require customers and employees to agree to file litigation in specific locales whose laws make it harder to hold companies accountable.”
Unsurprisingly, the American Association of Railroads (AAR) and other powerful corporate lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Trucking Association want to undercut the ability of workers and consumers to file lawsuits in the venue of their choosing. AAR, the rail industry’s biggest lobby, filed a brief last September on behalf of Norfolk Southern.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) also filed a brief siding with the railroad giant. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in the coming months.
“This is totally insane,” The Lever‘s editor, David Sirota, wrote on social media.
“Wow. Just wow,” Pennsylvania Sen. Katie Muth (D-44) tweeted in response to the report. “Sadly, this isn’t that surprising, but WTAF.”
“Should Norfolk Southern prevail, the company could use the ruling to challenge other lawsuits on the grounds that they’re filed in the wrong venue,” The Lever reported, citing Scott Nelson, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which filed a brief backing Mallory.
“Such a decision could affect lawsuits filed by residents exposed to hazardous chemicals as the result of accidents in other states,” including victims of air or water pollution caused by the recent derailment in East Palestine, five miles west of the Pennsylvania state border.
“[Norfolk Southern] might say, ‘You can only sue us in Ohio or Virginia [where Norfolk Southern is headquartered],’ even if you were injured at your home in Pennsylvania from an accident that took place five miles away in Ohio,” Nelson told the outlet.
In its brief, AAR argued that if the high court rules in favor of Mallory, he and other plaintiffs suing railroads under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) — a law protecting rail workers injured on the job—”could have a wide range of jurisdictions to choose from.”
Aerial view of the Norfolk Southern train crash site in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 5, 2023. (National Transportation Safety Board, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
However, Burns and Rock reported, “groups weighing in on Mallory’s side pointed out that ‘forum shopping’ is the norm for corporations,” including when companies with no physical presence in Delaware register in that state to dodge taxes or when firms file bankruptcy cases in states more likely to hand down favorable opinions.
Notably, “Norfolk Southern freely utilizes the Pennsylvania courts to enforce its rights,” the Academy of Rail Labor Attorneys, a group of lawyers who represent rail workers, pointed out in a brief.
“The railroad certainly is not prejudiced in any way by defending lawsuits in the state. For purposes of jurisdiction, there is no valid reason that a corporation such as Norfolk Southern should be treated differently than an individual within the state.”
During oral arguments in the case last fall, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal appointed by former President Barack Obama, asked Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon why the Biden administration decided to involve itself in this case.
In response, Gannon said, “We pointed out not just that… the excessive availability of general jurisdiction could cause international concerns for trade with the United States and our commercial interests, but also the petitioner had called into question the constitutionality of a federal statute, and so we thought that it was important to make sure that the court’s decision here wouldn’t implicate the constitutionality of federal statutes.”
The Biden administration’s contention that Pennsylvania’s law amounts to an overreach of state authority and calls into question the constitutionality of a federal statute is nonsensical, Keller, the plaintiff’s lawyer, told The Lever.
“The United States relies on consent-by-registration statutes [like the Pennsylvania law] to obtain personal jurisdiction over various foreign entities,” said Keller. “If it’s unconstitutionally coercive when Pennsylvania does it, why isn’t it unconstitutionally coercive when the United States does it?”
Burns and Rock warned that the high court’s decision could have implications for future lawsuits as well as pending ones.
At least five class-action negligence lawsuits have been filed in Ohio against Norfolk Southern since the company’s Feb. 3 freight train crash in East Palestine.
Aerial view of the Norfolk Southern train crash site in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 5. (National Transportation Safety Board, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)
While progressive advocacy groups and lawmakers have demanded that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg move immediately to improve rail safety rules in response to that unfolding environmental and public health catastrophe, The Lever reported last week that Buttigieg is actively considering an industry-backed proposal to further weaken the regulation of train braking systems.
Another Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials careened off the tracks on Thursday near Detroit. Union leaders and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have described the recent derailments as the predictable result of Wall Street-backed policies that prioritize profits over safety.
As Sirota, Burns, Rock and Matthew Cunningham-Cook of The Lever pointed out in a Friday op-ed in The New York Times, the U.S. is home to more than 1,000 train derailments per year and has seen a 36 percent increase in hazardous materials violations committed by rail carriers in the past five years.
The rail industry “tolerates too many preventable derailments and fights too many safety regulations,” the journalists wrote. “The federal government must move quickly to improve rail safety overall.”
“It shouldn’t take a chemical cloud over a community in the American heartland to compel the government to protect its people,” they added. “If we want to get train derailments much closer to zero, the rail industry must evolve.”
Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
The views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
TOO LITTLE TOO LATE!!
Norfolk Southern has agreed to give one of its unions the paid sick days it demanded for members in negotiations last year, and is in talks to grant sick days to its other unions as well.
The announcement comes hours after the company’s chief financial officer, Mark George, told investors that it is still struggling to fill the open positions it has at almost all 95 locations where staff is based. George also said the company may have cut staff too deep during the early days of the pandemic, and that it has had trouble bringing back laid-off staff members.
“Norfolk Southern’s success is built upon the incredible work our craft railroaders perform every day, and we are committed to improving their quality of life in partnership with our union leaders,” said Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw in a statement announcing the deal.
The deal is with the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Division, the union representing 3,000 track workers at Norfolk Southern, and the third largest union at the railroad behind the unions representing conductors and engineers. Norfolk Southern has about 19,000 employees total and about 15,000 of whom are union members. But that’s down more than 20% from the 24,600 employees it had — including nearly 20,000 union members — in 2019, ahead of the pandemic.
The agreement, announced by the railroad late Wednesday, also comes as the company struggles with the bad public relations caused by a derailment of one of its freight trains in East Palestine, Ohio, which led to the release of toxic chemicals into the air and water.
The company has pledged to give affected residents about $6.5 million in compensation and assistance, and says it will comply with a demand by the Environmental Protection Agency to pay for the cleanup.
But it’s still facing criticism for spending nearly $18 billion on share repurchases and dividends over the last five years, more than 2,500 times what it has pledged to residents and the community.
Norfolk Southern’s concession comes two weeks after another railroad, CSX (CSX), reached a deal with two of its unions to provide four sick days a year. The Norfolk Southern deal also provides four sick days a year, and it allows three personal days already in the contract to be used without the prior 48-hour notice requirement. The company says that means members now have up to seven sick days per employee.
Norfolk Southern and the nation’s other major freight railroads all faced criticism last year for refusing the unions’ demands for paid sick days for their members.
Many of the union members voted to reject tentative labor agreements that offered them an immediate 14% raise, including backpay, because of the lack of paid sick days. The unions argued that seven sick days a year for all their members would have cost all the railroads $321 million annually, a small fraction of the record profits they were reporting.
But the railroads refused to give in and eventually Congress imposed the unpopular contracts on the unions without the sick day provision, even though a separate sick day provision had the support of most member of Congress.
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Norfolk Southern aims to further boost train length as volume rebounds
By Bill Stephens | January 27, 2021
Seeking improvement in operating ratio, railroad anticipates most of increased traffic with same number of trains
TRAINS: David Lassen
NORFOLK, Va. — After idling the humps at six yards over the past two years under its shift to a Precision Scheduled Railroading operating model, Norfolk Southern now is turning its focus to further boosting train length.
The changes aim to help NS close the operating ratio gap with the rest of the industry by reducing the railroad’s fuel, labor, and locomotive-related costs.
“During the fourth quarter, we saw volumes continue their climb from pandemic-induced lows earlier in the year. So the mission of the operating team was handling more business while reducing resources and improving productivity,” Chief Operating Officer Cindy Sanborn said on the railroad’s earnings call Wednesday. “Our push for efficiency led to record train weight and record train length in the quarter. These larger trains, combined with our strategy of better matching train size and locomotive horsepower, drove us to record fuel efficiency and enabled us to get the job done with a smaller workforce and a record low count of locomotives.”
Traffic in the fourth quarter, while up from the third quarter, was down 1% compared to a year ago. But NS moved its tonnage with 16% fewer locomotives and 15% fewer crews as train length and weight both grew 10%. A combination of record train sizes and storing older locomotives improved fuel efficiency by 3%.
The result of all this: An 8% reduction in operating expenses for the quarter.
Expect more of the same this year. “We are preparing for significant volume growth in 2021,” Sanborn says.
With intermodal and merchandise volume outside of energy-related commodities expected to increase by 7% to 9%, NS aims to tack virtually all of the growth onto existing trains. Executives expect the railroad’s employment levels to hold steady or decline slightly this year.
“Traffic coming back is both our challenge and an opportunity,” Sanborn says. “We can and will add resources to meet customer needs, but first we must explore every option to fully utilize our existing crews and locomotives.”
NS plans to take several steps to efficiently handle volume growth, including rebalancing traffic between existing trains and running extras only when necessary.
“Full pin is a technique used to optimally match train size with the pulling power of locomotives,” Sanborn says. “While volume fluctuations can make this challenging, full pin drives fuel efficiency, controls crew starts, and improves asset turns.”
NS will increase the blending of different types of traffic in the same trains, which Sanborn says supports full pin and minimizes the number of road train starts.
By blocking traffic for the most distant points on the network, NS will minimize the number of times cars are handled en route, which reduces yard costs while improving velocity.
And Sanborn says NS will minimize its hiring needs by retraining furloughed employees for work in other crafts.
“We will continue to look at yards and see how we can speed up cars. The real mission around terminal capability and terminal footprint is around keeping cars moving, or not pushing cars into terminals, moving cars faster. So I think there’s still quite a bit of room there,” she says. “But you’ve seen us pivot now a little bit more into looking at our train length and locomotive utilization with full pin. And that’s really our primary focus right now.”
The operational changes NS made in the fourth quarter, just prior to the holiday peak shipping season, contributed to increased terminal dwell and lower train speeds as volume picked up. The pandemic also played a role in the deterioration of the fluidity metrics, Sanborn says, as some NS employees were out sick or were quarantined under COVID-19 protocols.
During the fourth quarter, cars spent 16% more time in yards while average train speeds fell 5%.
“We’ve gotten a lot better. We’re not at 2020 levels, but we are much, much better,” Sanborn says.
Norfolk Southern’s operating ratio has improved for a fifth straight year but at 64.4% lags rival CSX Transportation by 5.6 points. CEO Jim Squires says the railroad remains focused on closing the gap and aims for a 60% operating ratio by the end of this year.
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Norfolk Southern railroad execs got cash, in part, for ‘record’ train length
While concerns have been building across the railroad industry for years about the growing length of trains, our Scripps News investigation found that Norfolk Southern’s top executives personally pocketed millions of dollars in incentives and cash rewards after the company hit a controversial financial target and made its trains longer. Critics from within the industry say the specific financial metrics the executives were incentivized to hit can pressure them to cut costs — potentially at the expense of safety. The Norfolk Southern train that derailed just outside the small Ohio town of East Palestine stretched nearly two miles long.
A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) preliminary report said trouble with the train began with a suspected wheel bearing that overheated on the 23rd car.
When that car came off the rail, it set in motion a disaster that has put a national spotlight on the potential dangers of increasingly long trains. Scripps News has learned the length of the train in East Palestine is being investigated as a potential contributing factor to the crash.
In Norfolk Southern’s 2019 annual report, the company told shareholders that it had launched a major overhaul in its operations, saying it had begun “running fewer, heavier trains.”
That same year, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents Scripps News examined show Norfolk Southern began to make big changes in how top executives could qualify for large cash awards, tying more of those payouts to a number known on Wall Street as the operating ratio.
It is calculated by dividing operating costs by operating revenues, and records we discovered show that it has grown in significance at Norfolk Southern in recent years.
“Railroads are seeking to have that number be the smallest, lowest number possible,” said Steven Ditmeyer, the former director of research and development at the Federal Railroad Administration. “You want to squeeze the costs and increase the revenues.”
Ditmeyer is among those industry experts who say the drive to lower operating costs can be directly linked to longer, more dangerous trains.
“The longer they make it, the per-car-cost of labor is less. And the longer trains have greater damage done, greater, larger pileups, fires and so on,” he said.
“This sharp emphasis on operating ratio and how that’s driving behavior on railroads is a severe disappointment to me,” he said.
Ditmeyer says while longer trains increase his concerns about safety, they can push the operating ratio down. And with millions of dollars in payouts to executives on the line, SEC filings reveal the importance of that operating ratio had grown at Norfolk Southern to account for 60% of its cash awards by 2020 – surpassing every other performance measure combined. And the incentives worked — each year, the ratio dropped.
In 2021, when Norfolk Southern hit a record low operating ratio, it helped then-CEO James Squires land nearly $3.5 million in cash — almost three times what he’d earned the year before. At least four other executives got more than a million dollars each, including Norfolk Southern’s current chief executive officer Alan Shaw, who was executive vice president at the time.
Scripps News showed Jared Cassity, safety director of the nation’s largest railroad union, how under Norfolk Southern’s rules driving down the operating ratio by just a fraction of a percent could lead to huge cash payouts.
“You’re showing me numbers that I’ve not seen and that’s — it really is disgusting,” said Cassity, who worked as both a train engineer and conductor prior to taking on his national safety position for the SMART Union. “What that tells me is the railroads are going to keep flirting with danger or flirting with disaster as long as people are getting rich.”
Cassity said the families in East Palestine are paying the price and he believes more communities are at risk.
“You have these executives that are getting rewarded. And so the instructions keep coming down. No matter what happens. I want more. I want more. I want more. And that’s why you see the railroad saying that the train length is going to continue to grow no matter what,” Cassity said.
NTSB is formally consulting Cassity’s team in its ongoing investigation. Cassity says investigators are now looking into contributing factors to the East Palestine crash.
He says the train’s length is a big one.
“If you look at East Palestine, that one car that’s bad ultimately is going to derail and when it stops, it’s going to stop like that (snaps). And then everything else behind it comes crashing in. It exacerbates the damage. It exacerbates the likelihood that a car is going to be breached and leak hazardous materials into a community.”
There is currently no limit on train length, but the Federal Railroad Administration is studying the issue and noted this past December that “train lengths increased before infrastructure, technology, equipment, and operating practices could accommodate them.”
An executive with Norfolk Southern testified on Capitol Hill this past year and defended the value of long trains, saying that “running longer trains is — is allowing us to more efficiently move what we can move and safely.”
When we asked the company about how these long trains tie into its compensation for executives, a spokesperson wrote: “our incentive compensation is based on financial performance” and “not predicated on things like train length, weight, and speed.”
But that is not what we found the company told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a proxy filing when it touted its 2021 “record performance for train length and weight” to justify one reason why corporate executives earned a cash payout that year.
When we shared the document we found with Norfolk Southern, a spokesperson offered another explanation, acknowledging that train length was a factor in cash awards, but said it was not the only one.
Norfolk Southern did not agree to an interview with Scripps News and never responded to our questions about the biggest factor in those cash awards: the company’s “operating ratio.” A spokesperson did tell us part of the company’s incentives were also for improving safety.
This past December, when the Government Accountability Office reported on Norfolk Southern’s accident rate, it found the company had hit a 10-year high in 2021.
“This isn’t about doing what’s safest. And it’s it’s extremely concerning when you when you see the fallout and what’s happening,” Cassity said.
Legislative records obtained by Scripps News show Norfolk Southern has spent tens of millions of dollars over the years lobbying Congress and federal agencies — numerous times trying to block potentially costly safety reforms, including fighting against whistleblower protections and speed limits for high-hazard flammable trains. They also are opposing a current federal effort to require a minimum number of crew members on a train. Just this past December, the company told the Federal Railroad Administration that running trains with one-person crews is safe.
Cassity, who is also the union’s alternate national legislative director for their transportation division, believes there is a direct correlation between what the company is lobbying for and against, and their incentive structure.
“You see the payouts. That is what is driving their decisions,” he said.
After Norfolk Southern said it produced an “industry-leading total shareholder return,” it gave its then-C-E-O $8.5 million in stock and options on top of his cash award, bringing his total 2021 compensation to more than $14 million.
“What we experienced is not okay,” said Cassity. “And I don’t want to say that we dodged a bullet in East Palestine, but the next one may be in a major urban area. It may be in a downtown Chicago. It may be in a downtown New York City,” he said.
Norfolk Southern told Scripps News, “We are going to learn from this terrible accident and work with regulators and elected officials to improve railroad safety.”
So far, they say they’ve set aside $5.8 million for East Palestine families.
Contact the lead reporters on this story at mark.greenblatt@scripps.com and carrie.cochran@scripps.com.
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UPDATE ADDED: 3/7/23
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END OF UPDATE
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Now, it is likely that many of you can’t appreciate all the occult information I share in my posts. To many that stuff is all MumboJumbo. I understand. Let me be very clear…I don’t condone or accept any of their teaching, thinking, practices. HOWEVER, you had better believe that they are deadly serious about it! It is their RELIGION and they practice it fully. They want you to think they are above all that and that those who have strong religious beliefs are stupid and uneducated. ALL the while the elite are more religious than anyone. They serve their MASTER faithfully and the run everything by the NUMBERS and communicate in SYMBOLS.
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555 Isis Coronation Street (TV) MASTER NUMBER 555 (5/5/05) IN NUMEROLOGY Occultists recognize what they regard as the immense inherent spiritual power of numbers. Astrology is highly mathematical, and its most important use is to clothe events in time. Occultists seek to plan and time events according to what they consider to be the most favorably disposed time. GEORGE W BUSH DECLARES CEASE IN IRAQ WAR : War Beginning: War Ending: Occultists multiply and add numbers in order to create other sacred numbers — they also group numbers in ways that will be recognizable to other occultists. They often use the principle of intensification, that greater power is derived from groupings. Regarding the number 3, intensification is achieved when it is shown as 33, or 333. Obviously twice 333 is 666. The use of 333 by occultists is a blind to conceal the more offensive 666. 333 can serve as an “occult signature” when it is used to clothe an event in time — only fellow travelers will recognize this signature (remember 555?). Similarly, 999 also conceals 666. Likewise, 39 conceals 13. Hitler chose to begin WW2 in ’39. Thrice 11 is 33, and both Roosevelt and Hitler came to power in ’33. Both were committed to the establishment of the New World Order. Satanists believe numbers contain inherent power: great spiritual and temporal power. They literally believe that, if they attempt to launch a great and perfect plan, but do so without arranging the plan according to the correct occult power numbers, the plan could fail! In fact, when you see an event constructed according to the correct occult numbers, you may know that the event is occultic, no matter what rhetoric is filling your ears! Members of secret societies, such as Masonic Lodges of the Grand Orient, in their highest levels use the words “unknown superiors” to describe the force that guides them and their efforts. When the Illuminati was formed on Walpurgisnacht (eve of May 1st), 1776, five men gathered in a cavern deep beneath Ingolstadt in Bavaria and made contact with what they said were “unknown superiors.” One of these five men was Dr. Adam Weishaupt. The name Adam Weishaupt is profound in the sense that his name means “first man to know the superiors.” Here let it be noted that the five founders of the Illuminati used witchcraft rituals known as “The greater and lesser keys of Solomon”, which involved the “Pentacle of Invocation.” The pentacle is a three-dimensional, five-pointed star, and the number five became sacred to the Illuminati. We must also note that the Rothschild family consisted of five sons of one Moses Amschel Bauer, who took the name Rothschild, because it means “Red Shield.” Much later, a man named John D. Rockefeller also had five sons to control the American branch of Illuminism. The Illuminati and all of witchcraft is obsessed with the Pentacle of Invocation, and is it any wonder that the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. is exactly 555 feet high? Is it any wonder that we have a five-sided death house, known as the Pentagon? Number 5 – Adventure, change, freedom, exploration, variety, sensuality, unattached, curious, experienced, periodicity, knowledge seeker, knowledge teacher, traveler, imagination, child-like, playful, five senses (taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing). ‘55, 555, 55:55‘ the universe is making changes for you whether you ask for it or not. Allow the currents to take you into a new future full of possibilities still hidden from you at this point of seeing. Hold the vision until you land on the new shore. |
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There is also no standard symbol for spirit, although circles are common. Eight-spoked wheels and spirals are also sometimes used to represent spirit.
Spirit is a bridge between the physical and the spiritual. In cosmological models, the spirit is the transitory material between the physical and celestial realms. Within the microcosm, the spirit is the bridge between body and soul.
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See: Vulcan Salute Eye (all seeing & hand) Vulcan Salute Chevron Quotes And here’s another famous sign out of the 60’s and 70’s, also making a strong come back now. Which has always equated with the above symbol; peace. But the true meaning of this “V” sign goes way back to the 18th century Illuminati. This symbol represents the fulfilment of Illuminist founder Adam Weishaupt’s satanic “Law of Fives”. http://members.tripod.com/~RU_BOLD/occult_practices.html “The “v sign” has a colorful history. “V” is the Roman sign for the number five and Adam Weishaupt used it in the Illuminati to symbolise the “Law of Fives,” but there’s more. In the Cabala: “the meaning for the Hebrew letter for V (Van) is ‘Nail.’ Now, ‘The Nail’ is one of the secret titles of Satan within the Brotherhood of Satanism. Satan is letting us know that this is one of his favourite signs. Why else does he like the PENTA-gram (Penta = five!) and the FIVE-fold salute used in Masonry and Witchcraft?” Vulcan was a sun deity who was associated with fire, thunderbolts, and light. The festival in honour of him was called the Vulcania in which human sacrifices were offered. “According to Diel, he bears a family relationship to the Christian devil.’ It is fascinating to know that he married Venus, another name for Lucifer or the devil. What is even more interesting is that Vulcan is adored in Masonry under the name of Tubal Cain. In the Masonic Quiz Book the question is asked: “Who was Tubal Cain?” The answer is: “He is the Vulcan of the pagans.” Articles Symbols, Hand signs |
So, we see that the V or Vector symbol is very special to the elite for many reasons, not the least of which is that it serves as both the 5 and the 6. Five because it is the Roman Numeral 5, and the 6 because it is the Hebrew letter VAV which is also number 6 to the Hebrews. It is also the symbol of the NAIL, which can also be seen as an ARROW or a SPEAR or a SWORD.
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Occultist Numerology Numbers and Meanings – The number 5 is the number of Death;
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THE PENTAD. 5.From the Nicomachean Extracts we derive our knowledge of the Pythagorean doctrine of the number five. It is an eminently spherical and circular number, because in every multiplication it restores itself and is found terminating the number; it is change of Quality, because it changes what has three dimensions into the sameness of a sphere by moving circularly and producing light: and hence “Light” is referred to the number 5. Also it is the “Privation of Strife,” because it unites in friendship the two forms of number even and odd; the 2 and 3. (male and female) Also Justice from throwing things into the light. Also the “Unconquered” from a geometrical reason which may be found in Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Commentaries on the 1st Book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Also the “Smallest extremity of Vitality,” because there are three powers of Life, vegetable, psychical, and rational: and as the Rational is arranged according to the hebdomad,
and the Psychical according to the hexad, so the Vegetative power falls under the control of the Pentad.
Proclus on Hesiod gives two reasons for its semblance to Justice, “because it punishes wrong,
and takes away inequality of possession, and also equalizes what is less, to benefit.” Also named Nemesis, for it arranges in an appropriate manner all things celestial, divine and natural.
And Venus, because the male 3 triad and the female 2 or dual, odd and even are conjoined in it: Venus was sometimes considered hermaphrodite, and was bearded as well as full-bosomed. And Gamelia, that is referring to marriage. And Androgynia, being odd and masculine, yet containing an even female part. Also a “Demi-goddess,” because it is half of the Decad, which is a divinity. And “Didymus,” because it divides the Decad into two equal parts. But they called it Pallas, and Immortal,
The ancients had a maxim, “Pass not above the beam of the balance,” that is—be not cause of injury; for they said, let the members in a series form a Balance Beam. Thus when a weight depresses the Beam, an obtuse angle is formed by the Depressed side and the Tongue Vertical, and an acute angle on the other. Hence it is worse to do than to suffer injury, and the authors of injury sink down to the infernal regions, but the injured rise to the gods. Since, however, injustice pertains to inequality, equalization is necessary which is effected by addition and subtraction. Plutarch, in his treatise on the Generation of the Soul according to Plato, states that the Pentad is called “trophos,” which equals Sound,
because the first of the intervals of a Tone which is capable of producing a sound is the fifth; it is also a type of “Nature.” The Pentalpha or 5-pointed star, an endless complex set of angles, was the emblem of Health, Hygeia; it forms 5 copies of the capital letter A. It is also called the Pentagram, and the Seal of Solomon, and is said to have been the device on the signet-ring of this ancient Grand Master of the Mysteries. Kenneth Mackenzie remarks that, being formed by the union of the first odd and even numbers, 5 was considered of peculiar value and used as an Amulet or Talisman powerful to preserve from evil, and when inscribed on a portal, could keep out evil spirits; it is found almost everywhere in Greece and Egypt. Diodorus calls five “the union of the four elements with Ether.” There are 5 orders of Architecture; and 5 Senses of the human body now commonly known and described (but the whole are seven). Geometry is technically called the 5th Science. In Masonry the grand scheme is the 5 points of Fellowship, and note also 5 Brethren can hold a Fellowcrafts lodge. It is also called the Pyramid, from the arrangement of Monads,
thus three below, then two, then one above them. Note the system of 5 regular Euclidean bodies, tetrahedron, hexahedron or cube, octohedron, dodekahedron and icosahedron. The Pentagram was the emblem of safety. The Pentacle, the Masons’ signet mark (according to Stukeley), was the device borne by Antiochus Soter on a war-banner, to which was ascribed the signal victory he obtained.
The Ancients esteemed this number as a measure for drinking; they mixed 5 parts of water with their wine, and Hippocrates added 1/5 of water to milk as a medical draught. Phintys, the daughter of Callicrates, describes the Five virtues of a Wife: mental and bodily purity; abstaining from excess of ornament in dress; staying at home; refraining, as females then did, from celebrating public mysteries; piety and temperance. In Roman marriage ceremonies it was customary to light 5 tapers and to admit the guests by fives; see Plato in Leg. IV. Theology displays 5 modes of the Conception of God; Pantheism, Polytheism, Dualism, Unitarianism and Trinitarianism. Jewish references to five are many—5 gifts to the priests, 5 things which might only be eaten in the camp. Not to eat fruit from a tree until it was five years old. The trespass offering imposed on the Philistines, 5 golden emerods and 5 golden mice. Joseph gave Benjamin 5 suits of raiment—Joseph presented only 5 of his brethren to Pharaoh. David took 5 pebbles when he went to fight Goliath. The Jews classed a Bride’s attendants by fives—five wise and five foolish virgins. There are Five Articles of Belief in the Mahometan faith—in Allah, in Angels, in the prophet, the day of judgment, and predestination. The Five duties of a Member of the Christian church were stated by the Fathers: To keep holy the festivals; to observe the fasts; to attend public worship; to receive the Sacraments; and to adhere to the customs of the church. St. Paul said he preferred to speak 5 words in a language understood by his hearers than 10,000 in an unknown tongue. In arranging an Horoscope some astrologers use only 5 aspects of the planets—the conjunction, the opposition, sextile, trine and square; and the evil or good fortune of the person seems to depend on them. Among the Romans a display of 5 Wax Candles indicated that a Marriage was being celebrated; and special prayers were also made on such occasions to these 5 deities, Jupiter, Juno, Venus, Pitho, and Diana. See Rabelais, 3. 20. One of the two main divisions of Flowering Plants is characterised by a predominance of the numbers 4 and 5; these plants have almost a total absence of the numbers 3 and 6 in the component parts of their flowers. These are the Exogens or Dicotyledons; on the other hand the Monocotyledons or Endogens have a constant predominance of the numbers 3 and 6, and a total absence of 4 and 5 symmetry. There are 5 kinds of intercolumniations in Architecture, mentioned by Vitruvius, determined by the proportions of height and diameter, viz., Pycnostyle, systyle, eustyle, diastyle, and aerostyle. The Triad Society of China, concerning which we find an article in the Freemasons’ Quarterly Review, 1845, p. 165, boasts of great antiquity; it resembles Freemasonry in some points: five is a chief mystical number in its concerns. Its seal is pentangular, on its angles are 5 characters representing Too or Saturn, Muh or Jupiter, Shwuv or Mercury, Kin or Venus, and Ho or Mars. In the Infernal World are 5 terrors and torments; Deadly bitterness, horrible howling, terrible darkness, unquenchable heat and thirst, and a penetrating stench; says old John Heydon, quoting some mediæval father of the Church. He was admitted an Adept among the Fratres Rosæ Crucis, but was never received among the Magistri. Five styles of architectural columns are described: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. Sir Thomas Browne, 1658, notes an ancient Greek division of vegetables into five classes:— Dendron, Arbor, Tree; Thamnos, Frutex, Bush; Phruganon, Suffrutex, herb; Poa, Herba, grass; and Askion or gymnon, fungus, mushroom and seaweed. Note the Quintuple section of a Cone—Circle, Ellipse, Parabola, Hyperbola and Triangle. Agathe tuche, that is Good fortune, is the old title of Astrologers for the 5th house (succedent) of the Heavens, as shown in an Astrological Figure, and which refers to offspring, success in hazardous schemes of fortune or pleasure, and wealth. Joshua hanged 5 kings on 5 trees, they were found hidden in a cave, and were the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon. Every important measurement of the Jewish Tabernacle was 5 or a multiple of 5. The Hebrew letter H, Heh, 5, was in occult Kabalah always deemed of female potency. There were 5 principal parts of Solomon’s Temple. David Blesses the Lord 5 times in Psalms ciii., civ. The Talmud says that there are 5 little things which are a terror to 5 strong things; the mosquito to the lion; the gnat to the elephant; the ichneumon fly to the scorpion; the flycatcher bird to the eagle, and the stickleback to the leviathan. Lewisohn, “Zoology of the Talmud.” Five things have in them a one-sixtieth part of 5 other things; fire is one-sixtieth of hell; honey one-sixtieth of manna; the Sabbath one-sixtieth of the Sabbath hereafter; sleep of death; and a dream one-sixtieth of prophecy. Talmud, Berachoth, 57. 2. Even on the Sabbath you may kill 5 things—the fly in Egypt; the wasp in Nineveh; the scorpion of Hadabia; the serpent of Israel, and the mad dog anywhere. Talmud, Sabbat, 121. 2. In the First Temple of Solomon were 5 things which were not in the second Temple; the Cherubic Ark; the Shekinah; the Holy Spirit, and the Urim and Thummim. Talmud, Yoma, 21. 2. Rabies in the dog has 5 symptoms; its mouth gapes; it drops spittle; its ears hang down; it carries its tail between its legs, and it keeps to the side of any path. Yoma, 83. 2. For suckling mothers there are 5 things which are injurious; garlic, cucumber, melon, leeks and onions: said Rashi. If one study 5 years and then has found no profit in it; he will never profit by it. Talmud, Chullin, 24. 1. Five is the number of expiation and of sacrifice, the number of the passions, and the 5 wounds of Christ. These were commemorated anciently by 5 crosses inscribed on the Altar tables, and the Priest made 5 crosses on himself at the canon in the Liturgy. W. F. Shaw. Jesus 5 times foretold His passion, and gave 5 particulars concerning it, and received 5 wounds. The Brahmins speak of 5 skandhas, or attributes of men; they are rupa, form; vidana, perception; sanina, consciousness; sanskara, action; and vidyana, knowledge. In China 5 means Shangti or Thian, the God in Heaven: the Chinese speak of 5 Blessings—longevity, riches, health, virtue and a natural death. The ancient Chinese spoke of 5 Elements—earth, wood, fire, metal and water; and of 5 primary colours—yellow, red, white, green and black. The 5th Element, the Quintessence of the Alchymist, was derivable from the four, by progression—At first the Ens, then the Two Contraries, then the Three Principles, then the Four Elements. Separate the pure from the impure, gently and with judgment, and so you obtain the Quintessence, the Son of the Sun. Similarly note the progression; stone, plant, animal, man, God. The old authors added,—Talia si jungere possis, sit tibi scire satis; to which this Author adds,—sed Quod scis, nescis.
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because Pallas presides over the Ether, or 5th Element (akasa) 
As a precautionary move, CSX inspects and calibrates all detectors systemwide
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Norfolk Southern is inspecting all of its nearly 1,000 wayside hotbox detectors in the wake of the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that safety investigators say was caused by a wheel bearing failure.
NS also has confirmed that detectors in the East Palestine area were all operating properly when merchandise train 32N rolled past them prior to the 8:54 p.m. derailment.
“Under the supervision of the Federal Railroad Administration, the company has inspected all wayside detectors in the area of the incident and found they were operating as designed,” NS said. “Out of an abundance of caution, Norfolk Southern is now inspecting all of the nearly 1,000 wayside heat detectors on its system — on top of the regular inspection of the detectors every 30 days.”
CSX Transportation has completed a week-long inspection and calibration of its network of more than 1,000 wayside detectors as a precaution.
The Federal Railroad Administration has not issued a safety advisory regarding hotbox detectors after the NS wreck, which spilled toxic chemicals, forced the evacuation of East Palestine, and prompted a firestorm of criticism of NS and the other Class I railroads.
The National Transportation Safety Board said today in a preliminary report that the derailment was caused by a wheel bearing failure. Two hotbox detectors recorded rising temperatures on the suspect hopper car, but temperatures never reached the critical threshold that would have tripped an alarm and required the crew to stop the train until after the train passed a third hotbox detector moments before the derailment. (however, the axle was filmed with flames issuing from it.)
CSX Chief Operating Officer Jamie Boychuk ordered the systemwide testing on his railroad. “We decided to do this as an extraordinary measure,” CSX spokeswoman Cindy Schild says.
Normally, CSX’s wayside detectors are inspected every two weeks but are not necessarily calibrated during those inspections, she says.
FRA does not regulate the trackside detectors that can warn of hot axles, dragging equipment, or other defects. They’re generally spaced between 10 and 20 miles apart on main lines.
It was not immediately clear if the other big railroads have or will conduct more thorough inspections of their detector networks.
“Union Pacific is closely monitoring the NTSB investigation and reviewing its preliminary findings. We constantly evaluate our processes and the Ohio derailment offers Union Pacific and the entire industry a chance to learn and continue working together to further improve safety,” spokeswoman Robynn Tysver says.
BNSF Railway said its detectors are inspected regularly. “Our wayside detectors are inspected frequently by our signal team as part of our robust, extensive and ongoing inspection program. In fact, BNSF leads the industry in using artificial intelligence for detecting wheel defects as algorithms sort through more than 35 million readings every day taken from our 4,000 wayside sensors to identify potential issues,” spokesman Zak Andersen says.
A Canadian National spokesman said the railroad has a calibration and maintenance protocol in place for its detectors. A Canadian Pacific spokesman referred to safety-related comments CEO Keith Creel made at an investor conference this week.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy, speaking at a news conference this afternoon, said the board’s investigation will put wayside detectors under a microscope. Investigators will look into the spacing of detectors, whether they are or should be monitored in real time from a central data center, and the temperature thresholds each railroad uses to trigger an alert that would require trains with defects to stop.
The spacing of detectors and how they measure equipment defects are set by railroads and their standards vary considerably, she said.
In Norfolk Southern’s case, alarm thresholds are set at three levels:
- An axle temperature between 170 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit indicates a warm bearing that the crew must stop and inspect.
- Crews must also stop and inspect when a temperature difference of 115 or more degrees is detected between bearings on the same axle.
- At temperatures above 200 degrees, the problem is considered critical and the crew must set out the affected car.
NS says its wayside detectors “trigger an alarm at a temperature threshold that is among the lowest in the rail industry.”
“Roller bearings fail. But it’s absolutely critical for problems to be identified and addressed early, so these aren’t run until failure,” Homendy said.
ProPublica, an investigative journalism website, today reported that Norfolk Southern allows a monitoring team to instruct crews to ignore detector alerts in some instances.
Like other railroads, Norfolk Southern has been deploying more sophisticated detectors that use high-definition cameras and artificial intelligence to identify defects.
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DO YOU SEE HOW HIGH THOSE CARS ARE STACKED??
OH MY GOODNESS, anyone can see that this is all about the MONEY. All about GREED. They don’t care about safety. Not the safety of the communities, not the safety of their employees, not the safety of the environment. This is just plain greed. avarice. It will NEVER BE EHOUGH!
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Why More Will Never Be Enough
Do you know the difference, grammatically, between more and many?
Many is measurable.
But more is immeasurable. It can’t be counted or valued or summed or justified. More is always just ahead at the horizon. That’s why we never stop chasing it.
More is never enough. Source
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The greed of the people moving goods around does not end at the railway. It is just as bad and just as dangerous in the Trucking industry..
Just over 13 years ago I was learning to drive a semi. At the time, they were already making the semi trailers wider and taller, pushing the limits as far as they could go. Before I finished my course they were already talking about making the drivers pull doubles (a semi with two trailers attached) of even triples (semi with 3 trailers attached). Can you imagine? I could and I knew that was not for me.
Now they have GIANT Truck Tractors and they are pulling 72 wheels. Unbelievable! Those are so deadly on the road.
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31.7K subscribers
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• Hot Wheel Detector Check out Ezekiel’s You Tube channel for some pretty cool RR videos: / @emknapp6713 Made February 12 & 14, 2023 #DefectDetector#TrainDerailmentEastPalestine#TrainDerailmentFeb 16, 2023
- The train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3 had failed before
- Rail workers said the train had a reputation and was dangerously long and heavy
- Norfolk Southern has been accused of opposing laws that make trains safer
The 150-car train that derailed in Ohio causing a fire and the spillage of toxic chemicals suffered another mechanical failure days before the pile-up in East Palestine on February 3, rail workers said.
Employees for Norfolk Southern have suggested the train, designated 32N, was widely thought to have been too heavy and made up of too many cars, making it hard to stop, CBS News reported.
It comes as the Norfolk Southern CEO, Alan Shaw, became a focus of controversy after reports that the firm successfully lobbied former President Donald Trump to repeal a safety rule requiring some trains to have electronic brakes.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement on Tuesday that it had ‘identified and examined the rail car that initiated the derailment’ and said surveillance video ‘showed what appears to be a wheel bearing in the final stage of overheat failure moments before the derailment.’
A spokesperson for Norfolk Southern Corporation rejected the idea the train was too long and heavy, telling DailyMail.com it ‘previously ran as one longer and heavier train before being split into two shorter, lighter trains in the past few months.‘
The spokesperson claimed that but did not say when, where, or how long it ran as the longer double train. Nor does he state when it was split into two trains. I looked and could not find any information on such a thing occuring. I did find the following
General cargo
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Company officials failed to show up to an East Palestine town hall meeting on Wednesday night, claiming they ‘were afraid for their safety’.
The 150-car train that derailed in Ohio causing a fire and the spillage of toxic chemicals suffered another mechanical failure days before the pile-up in East Palestine on February 3, rail workers told CBS News
Norfolk Southern is now being sued by East Palestine residents who are concerned about the toxic chemicals being spilled from the train cars and a subsequent ‘controlled release’ of highly-flammable vinyl chloride.
(Four of the five tanker cars loaded with vinyl chloride were close the car that had the failure. IT was number 23 (mirror of 32) car, the tankers were cars numbered 26, 27, 28 and 29 and a fifth one, number 53. They were carrying well over 115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride. according to the report released by NTSB)
The derailed train consisted of three locomotives, 141 loads and nine empties – it was 9,300-feet long and weighed 18,000 tons. During the accident 38 individual cars derailed, which caused a fire that damaged an additional 12 cars.
‘We shouldn’t be running trains that are 150-car lengths long,’ one of the employees told CBS. ‘There should be some limitations to the weight and the length of the trains. In this case, had the train not been 18,000 tons, it’s very likely the effects of the derailment would have been mitigated.’
Railroad Workers United, a US rail workers union, described derailment earlier this month as a ‘19th century-style mechanical failure of the axle on one of the cars – an overheated bearing’.
‘There is no way in the 21st century, save from a combination of incompetence and disregard to public safety, that such a defect should still be threatening our communities,’ they wrote in a press release.
They went on to suggest that the distribution of weight across the train was also part of the problem.
‘Forty percent of the weight of NS 32N was grouped at the rear third of the train, which has always been bad practice and made more dangerous with longer heavier trains. This fact almost certainly made the wreck dynamically worse,’ they said.
A spokesperson for Norfolk Southern again rejected that claim and said that distribution of load along the train was uniform.
‘In addition to a uniform weight distribution, this train ran with a distributive power unit (a mid-train locomotive) which helps manage the dynamic forces of the train and reduces occurrences of broken knuckles,’ they said.
A man takes photos as a black plume rises over East Palestine, Ohio, as a result of a controlled detonation of a portion of the derailed Norfolk Southern train
East Palestine in Ohio is around 20 miles south of Youngstown and 40 miles northwest of Pittsburgh
A tank car sits on a trailer as the cleanup of portions of the Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed on February
There were other reports that rail workers considered 32N to be a dangerous and mismanaged train. One told Motherboard that it was nicknamed ’32 Nasty’ for its poor working conditions.
Norfolk Southern again dismissed the idea the train could be characterized in such a way.
‘Assigning a “reputation” to a train that fluctuates by thousands of tons on a regular basis is inaccurate,’ said the spokesperson.
The train company’s relatively new CEO, Shaw, now faces serious questions regarding the crash. He took the position on May 1, 2022 (Big day for the Occult), and has been serving as the president since December 1, 2021. According to his profile on the company’s website he joined in 1994.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said crews received an alarm from a wayside defect detector shortly before the train overturned, indicating a mechanical issue, and the emergency brakes were initiated. (not by the crew, but by the system, AI)
Videos posted online show fish floating dead in streams across a seven-and-a-half mile radius of the train derailment.
Residents have also complained of sore throats and persistent coughs in the aftermath, with some saying that their chickens have mysteriously died just one day after officials conducted a ‘controlled explosion’ of the trains carrying vinyl chloride and their pet foxes becoming lethargic.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has since written a letter to Shaw, criticizing the company’s unilateral decision-making in the aftermath of the derailment.
In a statement, Shaw said: ‘We will be judged by our actions.
‘We are cleaning up the site in an environmentally responsible way, reimbursing residents affected by the derailment and working with members of the community to identify what is needed to help East Palestine recover and thrive.‘ (LIES, LIES and more LIES)
Officials conducted a ‘controlled explosion’ of trains carrying vinyl chloride on February 6
The freight train carrying dangerous chemicals was enroute to Pennsylvania when it derailed
Workers are pictured removing contaminated dirt near the railroad tracks on Tuesday
A memorial near the train tracks was damaged in the derailment on February 3
Residents in East Palestine, Ohio are demanding answers as toxic chemicals continue to be released from the derailment in the area
About 50 cars, including 10 carrying hazardous materials, derailed in a fiery crash in East Palestine at about 9pm on Friday, February 3
In an assessment of the Norfolk Southern (NS) train derailment based on currently available information, Railroad Workers United (RWU) wrote that “the root causes of this wreck are the same ones that have been singled out repeatedly, associated with the hedge fund-initiated operating model known as ‘Precision Scheduled Railroading’ (PSR).”
The group noted that the “immediate cause” of the wreck “appears to have been a 19th-century-style mechanical failure of the axle on one of the cars—an overheated bearing—leading to derailment and then jackknifing tumbling cars.”
“There is no way in the 21st century, save from a combination of incompetence and disregard to public safety, that such a defect should still be threatening our communities,” wrote RWU, which supports nationalization of the U.S. rail system.
“Forty percent of the weight of NS 32N was grouped at the rear third of the train, which has always been bad practice and made more dangerous with longer heavier trains,” the statement continued. “This fact almost certainly made the wreck dynamically worse. But increasingly the PSR-driven carriers, driven to cut costs and crew time by any means necessary, cut corners and leave crews and the public at risk.”
According to RWU, “The short-term profit imperative, the so-called ‘cult of the Operating Ratio’—of NS and the other Class 1 railroads—has made cutting costs, employees, procedures, and resources the top priority. In this case, NS and the other carriers have eliminated many of the critical mechanical positions and locations necessary to guarantee protection against these kinds of failures.”
The crash in Ohio “has been years in the making,” the group added. “What other such train wrecks await us remains to be seen. But given the modus operandi of the Class One rail carriers, we can no doubt expect future disasters of this nature.”
“The PSR-driven carriers, driven to cut costs and crew time by any means necessary, cut corners and leave crews and the public at risk.”
Matthew Jinoo Buck, a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, explained in The American Prospect last year that “using PSR, railroad management’s job is to drive down the ‘operating ratio,’ or operating expenses as a percentage of revenue.”
“In other words, Wall Street judges railroads’ success based in part on spending less money running the railroad and more on stock buybacks or dividends,” Buck wrote. “Theoretically, focusing on lowering operating ratios pushes railroads to be more efficient, to do more with less. But when railroads have the market power they have today, they can instead ‘do less with less,’ as shippers and workers put it.”
Norfolk Southern, the product of a merger between Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway, appears to have followed that model closely.
The company announced a $10 billion stock buyback program last March and has consistently raised its dividend, rewarding shareholders while refusing to provide its workers with basic benefits such as paid sick leave.
For the full year of 2022, Norfolk Southern reported record-breaking operating revenues of $12.7 billion.
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As Buck wrote last year, “The driving force behind PSR’s widespread adoption was railroad executive E. Hunter Harrison and investor Bill Ackman, a notorious hedge fund manager.”
“After the two pushed through PSR at the Canadian Pacific railroad, Ackman’s colleague Paul Hilal opened an investment fund called Mantle Ridge, which invested $1.2 billion in CSX and successfully pushed CSX to appoint Harrison CEO,” he continued. “Under Harrison, and with the backing of CSX’s board, who saw larger bottom lines in sight, CSX pushed through PSR despite complaints from shippers who reported long delays or lost shipments. Every other railroad has adopted PSR or PSR equivalents; industry watchers say the one holdout yet to officially adopt PSR, BNSF, has adopted PSR-like measures.”
The crash in Ohio late Friday forced many local residents to evacuate to escape a possible explosion and the release of toxic fumes from the train cars, several of which were carrying vinyl chloride.
RWU said Tuesday that while many people in the area “were and remain evacuated, and property damage to both rail and non-railroad property will no doubt soar into the millions, we dodged a bullet as no rail workers and no trackside residents were killed.”
“This time,” the group added.
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The toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, is drawing new attention to the dangers of increasingly long freight trains — part of a series of cost-savings efforts by freight railroads that have drawn scrutiny from the industry’s critics.
The sheer bulk of the 150-car train that went off the rails Feb. 3 is just one factor investigators are expected to consider amid the unfolding ecological disaster near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, which caused a massive fireball, forced an evacuation and has left a lingering odor, fears of lasting contamination and thousands of dead fish. But union officials, regulators and congressional researchers say the industry’s trend toward ever-growing train lengths is causing a host of safety concerns that regulators need to address.
“The longer the train, the heavier the train, the more wear and tear it puts on the actual rail itself, as well as the equipment,” said Jared Cassity, a legislative director for the country’s largest rail union, SMART-Transportation Division. “We’re seeing more wear and tear. We’re seeing more unintended train separations, which is where the train breaks apart.”
The Ohio derailment is still under investigation by multiple agencies, including the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB, an independent agency, has said preliminarily that an overheated wheel bearing on one of the cars is partially the culprit for the derailment.
However, derailments like these typically have multiple points of failure, and the NTSB’s investigation will likely take over a year to complete. Such NTSB probes typically examine any conceivable cause that could have led to a crash, including equipment malfunctions, poor system design, the lack of safety precautions, inadequate training, crew fatigue and myriad other factors.
“One hundred fifty cars is a really, really significant [number of cars],” said Sarah Feinberg, who dealt with multiple oil-train disasters and a fatal Amtrak derailment as leader of the Federal Railroad Administration. “For years, the FRA and other safety regulators have raised concerns about trains of that size.”
Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) raised the length issue in a letter Wednesday to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, noting that only a handful of workers were on the train before it went off the tracks.
“[I]t is not unreasonable to ask whether a crew of two rail workers, plus one trainee, is able to effectively monitor 150 cars,” they wrote.
Indeed, 150 cars is the FRA’s threshold for classifying a train as “very long,” even though no formal definition exists. In a 2019 study, the Government Accountability Office said 150 cars is more than twice the average length of freight trains operated by major railroads from 2008 through 2017. The GAO found that average freight train lengths had increased by 25 percent since 2008, and noted that some stretch to nearly three miles long.
The freight rail industry’s main trade group dismissed concerns about length. “Comparable length trains have been safely operating for decades and the industry’s safety record has seen dramatic improvements over those same decades,” said Jessica Kahanek, a spokesperson for the Association of American Railroads.
But the GAO authors note multiple concerns about train length, including that it can hamper crews’ ability to operate the trains, it can take longer for brakes to stop them, and safety risks can arise when firetrucks can’t get past multiple blocked rail crossings. The FRA wrote in a December report that it lacks the data “to determine safety consequences” of long trains, and in some cases doesn’t have enough authority to act on them.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is also studying the issue.
(No doubt the Stakeholders hired them for the VSL study, to determine the value of human life vs cost of actions required to mitigate risks.)
Others, especially labor unions, say the trains are too long for crews on opposite ends to communicate with each other, and that workers on board sometimes can’t hear track-based warning alarms up ahead. “Our radios aren’t built for the distances that these trains are built for,” Cassity said.
At the same time, one industry analyst noted, freight railroads such as Norfolk Southern, which operated the trains in the Ohio disaster, cannot refuse to carry hazardous materials such as vinyl chloride, one of the toxic, flammable chemicals released in East Palestine. That’s because railroads are considered “common carriers,” which are obligated to transport any legally permitted product.
“The government does not allow Norfolk Southern and the other railroads to carry hazardous materials,” said rail analyst Tony Hatch. “It compels them to carry them.”
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine pledged during a television interview Wednesday to make Norfolk Southern “pay for everything” needed to deal with the aftermath of the disaster, while Vance said in a statement that questions remain about the train’s brakes and DOT’s “regulatory approach to our nation’s rail system.”
Feinberg also touched on the brake issue, saying she believes that a type of advanced brake could have lessened the damage from the Ohio disaster.
Academy of Sciences study failed to conclusively determine that ECP braking technology was superior to others.
The type and location of locomotives used to brake trains is especially important for long trains. The NTSB final report on a 2017 derailment in Pennsylvania faulted the use of hand brakes and the arrangement of freight cars in that accident involving a 178-car train, which also released hazardous chemicals and forced the evacuation of a nearby town.
“I and many others have said for many years that an ECP braking system is a much safer braking system to have on” any kind of “significant” train load, Feinberg said.
Norfolk Southern defended the integrity of the train in the Ohio derailment, including its braking configuration. Spokesperson Thomas Crosson told POLITICO that the weight distribution of the train that derailed in Ohio “was uniform throughout” and that a braking locomotive was placed mid-train to help it stop properly.
The Ohio derailment has also brought intensifying criticism of Buttigieg, including from conservative media outlets that slammed him for not speaking publicly about the accident until 10 days after it happened. Progressives like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) are also laying the incident in Buttigieg’s lap and calling on him to take “direct action.”
After days of calls for Buttigieg to engage more, the secretary weighed in Monday on Twitter to express concern about the people in and near East Palestine, whose “lives were upended through no fault of their own.” He also rattled off the multiple federal agencies involved in responding.
Railroad unions say the main problem is that corporate cost-cutting measures are eating into safety and raising the likelihood of disaster. This theme — corporate cost-cutting over safety — also underpinned part of why railroad unions threatened to strike last year.
Unions in particular target railroads’ implementation during the past decade of “precision scheduled railroading,” an operating model that focuses on minimizing workforce costs and maximizing equipment efficiency, including not leaving train cars idle.
Among the workforce cuts produced by this drive for efficiency were 40 percent of equipment maintenance workers, as GAO reported in December.
“We’ve heard reports from inspectors that the time they are allotted to inspect both sides of a rail car has decreased by 75 percent — from 2 minutes to as little as 30 seconds — thanks to the rail industry’s profits-over-people business model,” said Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department.
Kahanek from AAR responded that not only are trains inspected before departing a rail yard, technology along the track constantly assess each train’s soundness and safety as they move throughout the system.
(ya, we see how well that is working!)
Precision scheduling and other cuts made in the name of efficiency have worsened freight rail’s problems, said former Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), who chaired the House railroad subcommittee. “That was a huge change that reverberated throughout the entire North American freight rail industry,” he said. “And I think there has not been enough of a response by Congress to those changes.”
Railroads have been losing workers since 2015 and 2016, when waves of layoffs started and those who remained were made to work longer and less predictable hours under challenging conditions. Union officials say they’ve seen many seasoned workers with decades of experience leave the industry in frustration — even forgoing lucrative railroad retirement benefits — and railroads are now scrambling to hire novices to take their place.
The EPA has told Norfolk Southern it’s potentially liable under the Superfund clean law. But the agency said Sunday that the air in East Palestine is now safe to breathe.
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Feb 9, 2023
Fiery Ohio train wreck the result of “PSR”
Railroad Workers United (RWU) condemns the dangerous and historically unsafe practices by Class 1 rail carriers that resulted in this catastrophe that will impact the community of East Palestine Ohio for many years, if not forever. The root causes of this wreck are the same ones that have been singled out repeatedly, associated with the hedge fund initiated operating model known as “Precision Scheduled Railroading” (PSR). But risky practices, such as ever longer and heavier trains even precede PSR. The train that wrecked is a case in point, 9300 feet long, 18,000 tons. Other hallmarks of modern day railroading include deep cuts both maintenance and operating employees, poor customer service, deferred maintenance to rolling stock and infrastructure, long working hours and chronic fatigue, limited on-the-job training and high employee turnover.
Norfolk Southern train NS 32N with 150 cars on the manifest, derailed on Feb. 3 at 8:55pm. It consisted of 3 locomotives 141 loads and 9 empties. The train had a crew of 3 at the time of the wreck, consisting of an Engineer, a Conductor and a Conductor Trainee. 20 of its loaded cars were considered Hazmat by the railroad. 10 of those hazmat cars were involved in the 50-car pileup. Of those 10, 5 cars contained Vinyl Chloride, all of which were damaged and/or burned, with one of those leaking by design to relieve explosive pressure.
At this time, the immediate cause of the wreck appears to have been a 19thcentury style mechanical failure of the axle on one of the cars—an overheated bearing—leading to derailment and then jackknifing tumbling cars. There is no way in the 21st century, save from a combination of incompetence and disregard to public safety, that such a defect should still be threatening our communities.
40% of the weight of NS 32N was grouped at the rear third of the train, which has always been bad practice and made more dangerous with longer heavier trains. This fact almost certainly made the wreck dynamically worse. But increasingly the PSR driven Carriers, driven to cut costs and crew time by any means necessary, cut corners and leave crews and the public at risk.
The crew was able to uncouple the locomotives and move them to safety, preventing an even bigger tragedy. This would not have been possible under the various management schemes now being proposed to operate such trains with single person crews. Further, because Train 32N carried the standard crew of two or more workers, they were able to immediately take the necessary emergency measures to ensure a safe and effective response.
The short-term profit imperative, the so-called “cult of the Operating Ratio”—of NS and the other Class 1 railroads—has made cutting costs, employees, procedures, and resources the top priority. In this case, NS and the other carriers have eliminated many of the critical mechanical positions and locations necessary to guarantee protection against these kinds of failures. Simultaneously, they regularly petition the regulators at the Federal Railway Administration for relief from historically required maintenance and inspections.
The wreck of Train 32N has been years in the making. What other such train wrecks await us remains to be seen. But given the modus operandi of the Class One rail carriers, we can no doubt expect future disasters of this nature.
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