BNSF engineer walks away from career over safety concerns

Gene McDaniel remembers the night vividly. Piloting a BNSF Railway freight train west through Idaho, he approaches a road intersection without crossing arms, he sees an SUV.

The vehicle starts to go. Then it stops.

He sees four young children inside with their noses pressed against the car windows. They are waving at the train. McDaniel blares the train whistle again and again. Finally, the SUV pulls through, escaping a collision by inches.

“You can’t imagine what goes through your mind and heart when that happens,” McDaniel said. “A half-mile down the tracks, the train comes to a stop along with your heart.”

McDaniel spent almost 18 years working for BNSF Railway. He remembers interviewing for the job in 1997. His reason for wanting to work for the railway was simple — he had worked in mining and construction jobs, and knew what a dangerous work environment looked like. He felt BNSF would provide the training to advance his career, along with providing a safe work experience.

Although his time working as both a conductor and engineer often meant long hours and time away from home and family, he stuck with it. He knew working a 12-hour shift and then returning home to pay bills and mow the lawn meant staying awake for long hours.

Then this fall, McDaniel resigned from BNSF over what he describes as serious safety concerns.

He shared his story with the Pilot after several BNSF employees, who declined to be publicly identified, spoke out about their own concerns with safety issues they say stem from long work hours and unpredictable work schedules.

McDaniel says his story is not unique. When he resigned, he said 30 fellow workers called to say they wished they could do the same, if not for children in college or a mortgage to pay. At 54, McDaniel is still years from retirement and now he is looking for a job. But he knew he had no choice but to quit.

He recognized fatigue was an acceptable element of railroad operations, but BNSF in September changed the way it schedules crews working on the Hi-Line route through the northern tier of Montana. The change, McDaniel said, left it nearly impossible to know what day or time he might be called out to work. He describes one day when his start time for a shift was moved up by a day and half without warning.

BNSF has acknowledged that it changed operations in Whitefish. Prior to the changes, there were two separate pools of employees in Whitefish. Previously, one pool of employees operated solely between Whitefish and Havre and the other pool operated solely between Whitefish and Hauser, Idaho. Now, employees in the new pool operate from Whitefish to Havre or Hauser.

McDaniel took a call to come into work one night after the schedule change went into effect. He knew he was exhausted, but knew there would be the possibility of repercussions if he didn’t.

He was once again piloting the train west through Troy and into the canyon toward Bonners Ferry. It’s dark and the train is moving slow. He can feel himself nodding off, but still, he keeps going. He decides to “superman” through as he says is common on the railroad.

He either spaces out or dozes off. The engine passes through a crossing. He never blew the whistle.

Instantly, he thinks of that SUV with the four children. What if there had been a car trying to cross the intersection? What if he wasn’t able stop the freight train that takes more than a mile to stop? What if he had killed someone?

“If I had hit a motorist, I would have been criminally liable,” he said. “How would I wake up every day knowing I didn’t do what I was supposed to?”

McDaniel says there are more than 100 railway and road crossings between Whitefish and Havre, and between Whitefish and Spokane, where a train must sound its whistle. That doesn’t even take into account the areas where children might unknowingly wander onto the tracks or someone trespasses on the tracks.

“That’s more than 100 times each direction that someone could be in the crossing,” he said. “If I had an accurate time for when I was going to be on duty, I would have rested.”

That crossing with a missed whistle call became a turning point for McDaniel. He knew he should have followed his own advice from having worked the railroad for almost two decades. Advice he’s given to countless others about the dangers of working on the railroad.

“You can do everything right and be just as dead,” he said.

McDaniel says he asked BNSF for a leave of absence or time off until kinks in the new schedule got hammered out. He wanted to be rested and ready when he came to work. He says his requests were denied.

McDaniel has been long committed to safety on the railroad. He was elected to serve as the safety representative for his local union chapter of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. He volunteered in 2006 to work on the Whitefish safety committee.

“I wanted to be involved because I wanted to be a voice,” he said. “I knew how important safety is.”

The changes in scheduling also did away with a choice of which section of railroad to work. He explains that some conductors and engineers don’t mind driving through the mountain passes, while others would prefer to work on the plains in eastern Montana. No matter what, he said, driving the same section of track for years means valuable training and skills on how to drive that section.

“When pulling thousands of tons of equipment on steep grades, safety is paramount,” he said. “After five years of operating the same run you gain the knowledge of the territory. It’s dangerous when people run unfamiliar territory.”

McDaniel knows some will look at the pay of a railroad worker and say they have no right to complain about working long hours. But it is more than long hours, he said.

He’s kept a log book of all his hours working and waiting in a motel for his next shift. He’s done the math. All those years, it was like he was working two full-time jobs and one part-time at the same time.

What he called a “good trip” to Spokane, would have him working 11 hours on the way over, resting for 11 hours and working nine hours operating the train back. Other times, he might be left sitting in the hotel for 18 hours waiting to get called back to Whitefish.

By then he was considered rested, although he points out, it isn’t much rest when your call to work is pushed back again and again in two hour increments. Even working that many hours was fine with him as long as he could predict his schedule and make sure he was fully rested for work.

“You’re never off-duty when you work at the railroad because you never know when you’re going to be called in,” he said. “After 10 hours of rest time, the phone can ring at anytime.”

McDaniel was never operating a train during a fatality, but the near misses haunt him. He thinks about the two boys who wandered onto the track near East Glacier and were snatched up by their father just in time. Or the two girls who were playing on the tracks near Cocolalla Lake in Idaho.

“Every time you go by those places, you relive that moment,” he said. “When you know there’s not a thing you can do to stop, your heart just stops.”