Kansas District

Kansas District

Safety Meeting

01/19/11

Attendees: Monty Albrecth, Skeeter French, Bryan Mendoza, Nick Kelly, Ray Tarvin, Bill McWillie, Dan Bonawitz, Jamie Midgely, Cory Laird, Roger Bell, Tony Johnston, Mark Foltz, Nick Pfeifer.

Tony opened the meeting with all old business: We opened with the continued discussion of the removal of the New lead in the Topeka yard. Roger Bell asked what the reason for this was and Jamie, Mark, and Monty informed him that it had to do with drainage in conjunction with the project for raising the tie lead. Monty said that he would have sketches made up of the project and no date was given on when this would be accomplished.

Mark brought up that they were planning on spraying weeds along the main at K006 when weather permits.

Dan brought up the fact that south 2 at Muncie was eroded pretty badly, and Mark informed him that it had been dressed up. This will be inspected as soon as possible.

There was an open discussion on the costs of a bumping post versus a rock pile at the end of storage tracks on the territory. Ray wants this to be done up to UPRR standards. This item is open and will be revisited at the next meeting.

Dan and Monty talked about when we would be able to do the yard and industry audit and it was agreed that the weather was not conducive to this at the current time. We agreed that at the first good stretch of weather we would get this set up, also Monty agreed that we could go out on the Salina sub as well, since our employees work out to Junction City.

Jamie asked the question as to where the Kansas District Territory ended and it was agreed that it technically ended at Z73, but as was discussed earlier Monty was in agreement with going out on the Salina Sub. as well.

Mark brought up the fact that during his inspection duties he overheard the LMW63 crew inform the dispatcher they could not line a switch at Cold Spur. Upon inspection he found the switch had been run thru, he asked that if a crew finds a switch like this to please report it’s condition so that it can be repaired as soon as possible.

New Business:

Jamie brought up the issue that the grain trains are not being called as they show on the line up. His concern was that it affected crew rest and the tracks being tied up. Monty informed us that this is a problem with the elevator, and them not releasing them because of loading issues.

Roger brought up that the work trains needed to be shown on the Topeka line up as well because of the crew rest issue stated above.

Roger asked about the light pole in the parking lot at Topeka and the fact that it seems to move more than it should in a high wind situation. Monty said he would talk to Maintenance about this

Roger also brought up that foreign line railroad units coming in needed serviced, mainly the KCS units toilets. This item is still an open item.

Skeeter asked about any footing issues on or around the lead in Topeka, Dan and Jamie informed him that the main footing issues are in between the tie yard tracks. There are several dip and holes that need to be addressed, at this time they are hard to find due to recent snowfall.

Nick brought up the issue of getting rides at Armourdale in a timely manner. This lead to a discussion by Skeeter that he was looking into have the Railcrew vans being able to pick up and drop off crews in the downtown area, i.e. the gym and the like.

Tony brought up a question posed to him about a slow order in KC on main line 3. Bryan made a call and it was determined that main line 3 starts at the signal K001 and ends at Cypress Junction (K009).

There was a question about the landing pad at Z149 and it was agreed that it was acceptable and all were glad it was done.

There was talk of the slow orders that do not have any boards on the main line. Mark informed us that 50mph slow orders have a 24hr window to get all boards up. This item is still an open item and will be revisited at the next meeting.

There was question of the location of the brake sticks at the east end of the 200 yards; there is a fairly steep drop off on the landing pad. This item is still open while we look into solving this issue. We will contact the terminal safety team members.

Skeeter asked if any of the crews were having issues with the JEM radios? We informed him that we are already receiving complaints that there is a loss of communication between engineers and conductors when working or walking longer trains. All agreed that they are a poor product; he asked if we could assist him in building a paper trail on them. Dan informed Skeeter that we were already documenting this and would keep him in the loop.

Looking forward to working with and seeing you all again upstairs at Commerce on February 16th.