Railroad foreman’s death highlights ineffective safety procedures
The death of a railroad foreman who was struck by a train last month has led to urgent recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) for ways to improve safety for track maintenance crews to provide signal protection.
In the incident on May 28th, a track foreman for Metro-North Railroad was struck and killed by a Metro-North passenger train traveling at 70 mph in West Haven, Conn. The foreman had requested the section of track be taken out of service for maintenance. Two Metro-North rail traffic controllers, one of whom was a student controller, placed the section out of service. But the student controller reopened the track a little more than an hour later without the appproval of the qualified controller or the foreman.