Letter to the Political Leaders

 To all of our so-called political leaders. I am sure this isn't going to get read by anyone that matters but I will send it anyway. I am sure you all just enjoy receiving messages about Norfolk Southern but that is a company along with all of the other railroads that need to be looked into. I used to work for Norfolk Southern and never finished the training. Lets just say that the Conductor Training is a joke, they expect you to learn more in a short time than any other place I have worked. The classroom training needs to be longer than 3 weeks because you don't learn everything that you need to, for instance the didn't spend much time at all on the complete inspection of the cars in-fact in the whole 3 weeks I believe we only went over it once the day before the test to qualify to pass the class. During the test you received hints on what to look for otherwise everyone would fail. Once you pass you then go on to the OJT (on the job training). During that training you are not supposed to ride with a conductor with less than a year's experience, I myself think that is still not enough time to train a person on that job but that's me. Well I was at a small station in Conneaut, Ohio in Ashtabula County. That station didn't have many choices of who you could go with so needless to say I was with people who have less than a year's experience most of the time I was there, I was ok with that thinking that none of these trips would count for the training for qualification but I was wrong. When I finally got with a person with the amount of time that I was aloud to get off the train and learn, the people were mad because I didn't know what I was doing causing the management who all knew I didn't get much time with people over a years experience to tell me that I only had 3 weeks of training left and if I didn't learn everything I needed I would be terminated so I quit. There where people there that management would get mad at because they did complete inspections on the trains and it took to long, that I didn't understand considering I believed that the job was a huge danger to not only the conductor but also the general public, most every one of the conductors do not do a full complete inspection but get away with it by saying things over the radio so that it looks as if they are doing it. While I was in training the inspection was done at a fast pace and I would get yelled at if I stopped trying to look for all that I was supposed to look for, they do it as a fast pace walk just glancing. I have noticed worn brake pads that never get changed and even the engineer of the engine would say that Norfolk Southern does not do maintenance on the engine as they should, they just Band-Aid it. The company only cares about profits over safety and if things don't change there will be many more of these accidents. Another safety hazard is with the out of town travel and how the trains run I can't count how many 24 hour days I did doing that, for an example the train would get to its destination maybe around 2 or 3 am you would go to the hotel go to sleep then next thing you know you would wake up in the morning, as much as you would try to go back to sleep you couldn't then right as your about to fall asleep at around 10 at night your phone would ring and give you 2 hours notices before your train so depending on what time you woke up you could have already been awake for 12 hours making the ride home on the train dangerous because everyone keeps nodding off no matter how hard you try to stay awake. The thing that sucked most for going out of town as a trainee is that after a 24 hour stay in a hotel room which wasn't uncommon it would reset your time back to day one so that you never got a total of 6 days on and 2 days off instead you never got time at home but got time out of town. I believe that the manufacturer of the rail cars needs to add sensors to the cars to detect when a brake is stuck or the gearbox is overheating. It wouldn't be hard for them to do that and they could take power from the engines by connection like a semi trailer or even solar power. This change will be fought hard by the railroads due to the fact they want huge profits, I mean come on now is peoples safety worth more than million dollar bonuses or even the 3rd or 4th house that they don't need. Time to show Americans that their safety is more important than the company's profit margin.