Conn. railroad operator saw multiple derailments in home state last year
As the federal government ratchets up railroad scrutiny after a derailment stoked fears of lasting environmental damage in an Ohio community, the largest shortline operator in the United States saw a slight uptick in derailments in 2022 in its home state of Connecticut — a year after reducing North America derailments by more than half.
Genesee & Wyoming has its corporate headquarters in Darien with a focus on hauling bulk freight and commodities to central rail depots and ports, with 115 employees in Connecticut as of 2021. The company operates nearly 100 short lines in the United States, to include in Connecticut with the Providence & Worcester Railroad, the New England Central Railroad and the Connecticut Southern Railroad.
In 2019, Genesee & Wyoming took an $8.4 billion buyout from Brookfield Infrastructure Partners and GIC, the latter a fund that invests foreign reserves on behalf of the Singapore government. John Hellman has stayed in the corner office as CEO of Genesee & Wyoming.
Genesee & Wyoming railroads reported just 22 derailments in North America in 2021, the most recent year the company has published data, which was a big improvement over 2020 when 50 trains derailed.
Last year in Connecticut, however, three Providence & Worcester Railroad trains derailed including
one in which a train approached the Cedar Hill rail yard spanning the New Haven and Hamden border at 13 mph. According to a Federal Railroad Administration report on the incident, that was 4 mph above the maximum allowed speed on that stretch of track owned by CSX.
Human error is one of the three broad causes the Federal Railroad Administration
investigates in derailments, coupled with track and equipment failures. In 2022, the Providence & Worcester Railroad checked off those two other boxes in separate Connecticut incidents, including on May 31 when an irregular track alignment caused two cars to derail as a short Providence & Worcester train chugged at nearly 40 mph through the Jewett City section of Griswold.
On September 17, a Providence & Worcester train pulled out of Wallingford with more than 90 cars carrying crushed stone, when a coupling pin failed that caused eight cars to derail as the train trundled along at about 10 mph.
“Safety is a core value at Connecticut Southern, New England Central, and Providence and Worcester railroads — with many employees living directly in the communities we serve and, as such, taking great care to operate safely every day,” Ciuba stated in an email response to CT Insider queries on the 2022 accidents. “With derailment prevention critical to that safety focus, we inspect and maintain all locomotives, equipment and track against regulations governed
by the Federal Railroad Administration ... as well as against our own internal policies that, in many cases, exceed federal standards. Railroad employees are also trained and certified on FRA regulations as well as other regulatory agency requirements when applicable.”
Derailments occur with frequency across the United States, with some in the context of rail yard operations in which trains are traveling less than 10 mph with no cargo or passengers. Metro North had two such incidents in the span of a few months last year at its New Haven yard, with no passengers aboard and no reported injuries to crews. In New York, nearly three dozen derailments occurred last year across freight and passenger rail lines, though just seven on main lines on which trains travel at higher speeds than in yards.
But railroads have gone calendar years without derailments in Connecticut, to include last year in the case of the Amtrak, the Central New England Railroad, the Housatonic Railroad, the Naugatuck Railroad and Pan Am Railways.
Genesee & Wyoming managers led a pair of sessions on rail inspections
at last year’s inaugural track and railroad safety symposium hosted by the Federal Railroad Administration, one of two federal agencies that investigate rail accidents along with the National Transportation Safety Board.
The company has long championed itself as a safety leader in the railroad industry, reporting just 1.08 injuries in 2021 for every 200,000 hours of employee working time. That was less than half the average injury rate for U.S. short lines that number just over 600 in all — and slightly better than the largest “class I” railroads like Norfolk Southern and CSX which operates in Connecticut.
And in a 2022 environmental, social and corporate governance report, the company details drills it runs regularly against the possibility of any hazardous spill.
“We have developed enhanced safety practices that are in place on rail lines where we transport dangerous goods, which require that specific activities and precautions are taken when moving these materials,” the company states in the report. “To keep our communities safe, we work with emergency response agencies to enhance our preparedness in the event of an accident or incident in a simulated environment.”
Genesee & Wyoming has continued to experience derailments nationally since the start of 2022, however, including two weeks ago in Toledo, Oregon, when some 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel spilled from a derailed tanker car on the company’s Portland & Western Railroad. Oregon’s environmental department stated in February that some of the fuel likely reached a nearby river, via a storm drain emptying into a creek.
The Oregon accident came on the heels of two derailments in Ohio in the preceding weeks, including in January when nearly 100 cars of an Ohio Central train went off the rails east of Columbus. In February, a bolt that secured a section of rail came loose on the Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern Railroad owned by Genesee & Wyoming, causing a train to derail in Delphos near the Indiana line.
With environmental impact still unknown of the Norfolk Southern derailment in the East Palestine, Ohio, Norfolk Southern’s CEO Alan Shaw spoke Thursday to a U.S. Senate committee, which has renewed attention on the larger topic of rail safety. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., faulted the industry for job cuts over the past decade he suggested have impacted rail safety.
Entering March, the Federal Railroad Administration vowed to accelerate inspections on routes traversed by trains carrying “highhazard flammable” cargoes and other hazardous materials.
The agency cataloged nearly 300 derailments last year of trains with cars carrying hazardous materials, only 10 in which substances were reported as having been released. Pan Am Railways, which traces its roots to a New Haven company, was involved in another of those accidents last year in southern Maine when two liquefied petroleum gas tankers derailed, with one leaking fuel into the ground.
Ciuba cited Association of American Railroads data that shows 99.9 percent of hazardous material shipments reach their destinations without incidents like derailments or other accidents, calling rail the safest mode of groundfreight transportation.