Chemical Transportation Safety and Responsible Care

Lincoln County (LincUP) Community Advisory Panel

LincUP provides open dialogue on health, safety and environmental issues between representatives of the community and Union Pacific Railroad to promote awareness and understanding for mutual benefit. For a complete listing of members, see 2009 LincUP Panelists.

Questions? Comments?

Contact the LincUP Facilitator, Lorre McKeone.

Minutes of Meeting: Oct. 26, 2009

Present: Sue Buhlig, Terri Burchell, Scot Cockson, Andrew Eshelman, Rich Hoaglund, Edward Joel, Marc Kaschke, Kim Keeling, Shirley Kissinger, Bob Lantis, Dan Mauk, Tony Orr, Jean Pavlik, Tom Pendleton, Gene Tacey, Crystal Welch, Steve VanBoening, Bob Wilkinson, Glynn Wolar. Guests: Brian Davis (UP), Mark Esterline (Berean Church).

Absent:Marcia Colvin, Jerry Covey, Dallis Dye, George Kleeb, Lyle Minshull, Bob Morrison, Jeff Nichols, Jim Nitz, Steve Schad, Brian Shay, Chad Wilbourn.

Facilitator: Lorre McKeone.

Announcements

Visitors were welcomed: Brian Davis (Director Mechanical Maintenance) and Mark Esterline (youth pastor at the Berean Church).

The facilitator reminded the panel that the upcoming November meeting is the last meeting of the year and we will be recognizing four members who are completing their three year term on the panel.

Community Roundtable

No announcements.

UP Report

Tony Orrreported that car loadings are stable. Local safety numbers continue to show improvement with decreases in incidents and derailments.Trains are moving through the yard efficiently with about 92% on time. Coal traffic is steady. Workers are involved in lots of training and retraining.

Kim Keeling told the panel the Union Pacific HazMat team has been delineating their training programs for different groups of responders (volunteer fire fighters, paid fire fighters, HazMat teams and State Emergency Response Teams) in order to provide more targeted training.

Meeting Topic

Bailey Yard Car Department – Brian Davis (Director Mechanical Maintenance)

The Car Department is responsible for inspecting rail cars and completing needed maintenance and repairs. North Platte is a major inspection point for most trains where inspections are completed in accordance with federal regulations. Car department employees work at 8 different locations in the yard:

• Car Shop: This is the main shop in the yard where the heaviest repair jobs are completed
• West Mini Rip: An expediator track on the west end of the yard by Birdwood Crossing. Minor body work and smaller repairs are completed outdoors.
• Purification Track: Cars from unit trains (grain, rock, coal) are brought to this area for more extensive repairs and maintenance of problems identified by various detectors.
• West Bound and East Bound Classification yards: Inspectors look at every car that is humped and sorted into trains in the classification yard to identify cars needing repairs.
• West Bound and East Bound Run Through tracks: Trains must be inspected every 1000 miles so most trains receive these inspections and are fixed in North Platte.
• In Train Repairs: Wheels are changed while the cars are still in the train using a scissor jack to lift two cars while a Green Machine fork lift with a zero turning radius lifts out defective wheelsets and inserts new wheels. This process, developed by Car Department employees in North Platte, makes it possible to change wheels in about 15 minutes. Prior to development of this process cars with bad wheels had to be set out of the train, fixed and then scheduled onto a different train, taking several days.

The Car Department employs 28 supervisors and 300 Carmen. Supervisors conduct safety briefings, assign work, interface with the Transportation Department, conduct quality inspections on equipment and review work completed. Carmen complete inspections and repairs. These workers are industrial athletes visually inspecting approximately one car per minute and making repairs outdoors in all kinds of weather 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Most defects requiring repair are identified through visual inspection by these Car Inspectors, the remaining consist of scheduled tests or conditions indentified by wayside detectors, train crews and customers.

To assist in identifying defective wheelsets, preventing expensive derailments, wayside detection systems such as “hot box” (thermal), acoustic and impact detectors have increasing been used over the last decade. A new Ultrasonic Testing Wheel Defect Detector Facility was recently built in Bailey Yard to find subsurface tread defects that can lead to broken wheels and major derailments. This is the first and only facility of its kind in the country and utilizes fully automated ultrasound technology to scan every wheel as the train moves through the facility at 5 mph. Results are immediately available to the repair team which replaces the wheelsets during the regular train inspection. To date 46 defective wheels have been identified with this new technology.

Car Department Statistics Ave. 14,000 rail cars are inspected every day, 65 released from repair and 30 wheelsets are changed. Carmen also catch about 90% of the non-accidental releases, and inspect cars from safe loading procedures making sure lading is secure.

Committees

Membership: Bob Lantis will check again with Orville Kaschke on the Ag position. Mark Esterline is considering the Religious representative position. Glynn Wolar recruited English professor Jessie Allen to take his place representing the college. Bob Wilkinson will be moved to the Retired position when Tom Pendleton completes his term in November. Steve Van Boening will speak to Mike Brei and Tom Pendleton will visit with Tom Johnson about the wage earner position.

Planning: In November we will recognize retiring panel members, hear an Operation Lifesaver presentation and an update on Rail Fest. In January we will have a presentation by Chad or Tony recapping 2009 and providing an outlook for UP in 2010.

Outreach: This committee wants to show the two Shelter In Place videos we currently use to the panel in November. They want to find out what panel members would like to see included in a similar video produced for North Platte in conjunction with UP.

Summary and Strategy

Next meeting: 5:15 p.m. Monday, November 23, 2009

Location: Meet at North Platte Community College student lounge, North Campus (on Halligan Road)

Meeting Topic: Operation Lifesaver, Rail Fest update and recognition of retiring panel members

Speaker: Larry Covey, Dave Harrold

Next Meeting - Nov. 23, 2009

Agenda