toledoblade.com --

At the Watkins railroad yard on the southeast side of Columbus, a Norfolk Southern locomotive will begin moving around today with nobody on board.

Unlike the unattended CSX engine that went on a 66-mile jaunt from the Stanley yard in suburban Toledo to Kenton, Ohio, last year before it was stopped, the Norfolk Southern engine will be unmanned purposely.

The engine will be equipped with a radio remote-control system as part of a pilot program that Norfolk Southern and several other major railroads across the country - including CSX, Burlington Northern & Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and Kansas City Southern - are undertaking to begin large-scale remote-control operation in the United States. "We're going to do these pilots, then negotiate [with the unions] how it is to be used in the future," said Rudy Husband, a Norfolk Southern spokesman.

Several railroads expect remote control to play a significant role in operations.

On Dec. 18, equipment manufacturer Cattron Systems of Sharpsville, Pa., announced that CSX had bought 100 locomotive remote-control systems. Earlier last year, Kansas City Southern ordered 50 from Canac, a Canadian firm that has its main factory in Pittsburgh.

Bob Sullivan, a CSX spokesman, said his company's initial training and tests will be conducted at two rail yards in Florida: one in Tampa and the other near Jacksonville.

Frank Trotter, Canac's president, said he is certain a remote-control system would have stopped the CSX runaway from the Stanley yard in Lake Township on May 15, 2001.

In that incident, a CSX engineer mistakenly pushed a throttle lever instead of a brake before leaving the engine to change a track switch. The engineer was unable to climb back aboard and the train rumbled off southward along a secondary line.

The train was stopped about two miles south of Kenton after another train crew gave chase and coupled its locomotive to the runaway's last car, then braked hard enough that a railroad employee could climb aboard the slowing runaway and stop it.

Mr. Trotter said a remote-controlled locomotive would have stopped once it left radio range - typically a mile or less - because the brakes activate if the controller's signal is lost.

Woven into the remote-control debate is a long-running feud between the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, which represents engineers at the major carriers, and the United Transportation Union, which counts conductors and trainmen among its members.

Officials of the two unions are skeptical of safety statistics the railroads cite in arguing that remote-control operations not only allow the same tasks to be completed with fewer employees, but are safer. But a turf war is under way with each union claiming its members should get the remote-control jobs.

On Sept. 26, a committee representing the five big railroads signed an agreement assigning remote-control work to the United Transportation Union.

The engineers' union protested, and on Jan. 16 a federal judge in Chicago granted the railroads a preliminary injunction forbidding the brotherhood from striking over remote control.

The engineers' union, whose members recently rejected a proposed merger with the United Transportation Union, accuses the latter of "selling out" to the railroads on remote control.

UTU President Byron Boyd responded that he'd rather have a say in how the technology is deployed than have that dictated to his members by management.

"Obviously, this isn't our desire" to see microprocessors replace workers, Mr. Boyd said. "But you'd have to be a fool to not recognize that technology creates change. You have to try and control that change - make it work for the people you represent."

"At this stage, it appears that yard [service] is the way to go," said Pat Hyatt, a spokesman for Burlington Northern & Santa Fe.

During the early 1990s, the transportation union won an arbitration case to represent remote-control locomotive operators in Canada, where such devices have been in yard-switching use for about five years.

Short lines and industrial railroads in this country have used remote control even longer. But major U.S. carriers, lacking regulatory guidance and apparently leery of labor trouble, steered clear of it until now.

Last February, the Federal Railroad Administration filled the regulatory void - at least to a degree - by issuing remote-control guidelines that, among other things, suggest a 20-mph speed limit, advise crews not to climb on or off moving locomotives, and recommend against remote control of passenger trains. Major railroads have taken those guidelines' issuance, plus remote control's reported safety record in Canada, as a green light to test the technology here.

Canadian National Railways, the most extensive remote user, told the administration in 2000 that its accident rates in yards with remote-control switching was 56 percent lower than that of traditional yards, where crewmen on the ground use radios to tell an engineer what to do with the locomotive. Mr. Trotter said not a single accident has been blamed on a malfunction of the remote-control equipment.

Proponents say the reason is very simple: With remote control, there's no chance of a miscommunication between the engineer and the ground men that could result in train movements the latter don't expect.

Union officials, especially those with the engineers' union, are suspicious of the safety record.

"We're not entirely convinced that the data is sufficient to document safety," said Bob Harvey, a regulatory research coordinator with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The person controlling engine movement becomes exposed to "on-ground dangers," and overall, fewer employees are looking out for trouble, he said.

Jim Ong, first vice chairman of the brotherhood's Ohio state legislative board, said he suspects remote-related problems are underreported.

Getting undisputed safety data is what the pilot programs are all about, Mr. Boyd said. "The test projects will show how far the technology will go - how safe it is," he said.

Once the negotiations begin, Mr. Boyd said, "We may be arguing from different positions, but we'll be arguing over the same set of facts."

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