GRAIN HANDLERS INVEST IN WORKER SAFETY FOR RAIL OPERATIONS

More and more grain handlers have been installing equipment to protect employees who are working 14 feet up atop covered hopper cars from falls, though the approach varies from company to company. Fall protection units often are custom-designed to fit the unique aspects of the job site and the work performed.

One example is Maumee, OH-based The Andersons Inc., which has installed fall protection equipment at several of its elevators in a four-state region. Perhaps the most unusual installation was completed over the winter of 2000-01 at the company's 5.5-million-bushel rail-loading terminal at Delphi, IN (765-564-6130/www.andersonsinc.com), which serves as both an indoor and outdoor system.

The Delphi facility loads 50-, 75-, 85-, and 100-car trains on the Norfolk Southern at a rate of 55,000 bph, says Operations Manager Bob Marlow.

The spout for the facility's bulk weigh loadout system is located in a metal rail shed, which does a good job of holding down dust emissions. However, the speed of loading railcars, which are pulled by locomotives through the shed in five-car strings, requires a six-worker crew, including one on top of the rail-cars. This worker monitors the flow of grain into the railcars and then closes the hatches and seals them.

"The first and most obvious reason for installing fall protection equipment is to protect our employees," Marlow says.

The Andersons looked at several systems on the market before settling on a patented, truss-supported I-beam-and-trolley type unit designed, manufactured, and installed by Fall Protection Systems Inc., Florissant, MO (877-972-0400/www.fallprotectionsystems.com).

The system stretches 300 feet in length, nearly long enough to cover an entire five-car string, with portions both inside and outside of the loadout shed. The section inside the shed is mounted directly on the shed structure, while the outdoor sections are supported by 30-foot-tall, heavy-duty steel poles in concrete bases. The system is rated to handle up to four workers at once.

With the I-beam suspended overhead, workers simply don a full body harness and attach to the self-retracting lifeline, which is connected to a trolley that can roll the full length of the I-beam without interruption, since the beam is virtually seamless.

"We preferred an I-beam system to a cable-type system for several reasons," Marlow explains. "We felt that with the conditions we have during the winter, there was a danger of icing on a cable, which could interfere with operations.

"The primary thing, though, was that if we did have a fall, we would have to take the entire cable-type system out of service until it could be repaired and tested. With an I-beam and trolley, we would have to take the individual harness and lanyard out of service but not the entire system."

Also, with rigid beam systems, the beam does not stretch and, unlike a safety cable, has no elastic memory. Therefore, falls normally are limited to less than two feet, and when a fall is arrested, secondary falls due to bouncing are eliminated.

In practice, The Andersons only allow two workers on top of railcars at a time under most circumstances.

Catwalk Modification
The Andersons has a reputation of designing new technology or modifying existing technology to suit its needs.

In this case, The Andersons' in-house engineering department in Maumee designed a 300-foot-long catwalk to run the length of the fall protection unit, parallel to the loadout siding. Andersons employees installed the catwalk, which is mounted adjacent to the Fall Protection Systems unit.

"The catwalk allows our crew to close and seal a hatch, step off the car, wait for the next one to roll past, and step back onto the car safely, all while the string of cars is in motion," Marlow explains.

This system required some compromises in its design, since covered hopper cars vary somewhat in height - in some cases the worker must step up onto the catwalk from the railcar; in others, the worker must step down. However, having the Fall Protection Systems unit in place allows the worker to do this safely.

Railcar Wash
Fall Protection Systems Inc. also was the vendor of choice far fall protection equipment at the other end of the Corn Belt at Frito-Lay Inc.'s 3-million-bushel corn receiving elevator in Gothenburg, NE.

This unit, however, is not used for railcar loading but as part of a "wet cleaning" station for railcars, located some distance away from the elevator structure.

"We are basically a single-car shipper, and we have a pool of covered hopper cars from the Union Pacific (UP) that we use to ship food-grade corn to our chip plants," says Operations Manager Christian Freberg.

Normally, these railcars cycle back and forth between the chip plants and Gothenburg and require relatively little maintenance and cleaning in between round trips. However, during peak demand seasons for Frito-Lay products such as during the summer or holidays, the company must bring in "free-runners" from the UP to haul the extra corn needed.

"Often, it's hard to tell what the railroad had in those cars before, and we need to get them up to food-grade standards," Freberg says. "We can do some dry cleaning in our loadout shed, but we need the outdoor station for wet cleaning the cars with pressurized water, bath inside and out."

There was never any question that there would be fall protection equipment at the station, not just because of the usual hazards associated with working on top of railcars, but because of the additional potential fall hazard associated with handling water under high pressure.

Last autumn, Fall Protection Systems installed a 120-foot-long overhead I-beam system, suspended from a 30-foot-tall support pole at either end, with the poles firmly mounted in concrete bases. The system is rated to handle two workers at once and stretches the length of two railcars.

In addition, this installation includes a metal staircase mounted on one of the two support poles, which allows workers to climb on top of the railcars safely in all weather.

"'We've had no problems with the system so far," Freberg reports. "It has enabled our employees to clean up railcars in a safe manner within OSHA guidelines."

Two-Spout Coverage
An Iowa cooperative took yet another approach to fall protection at a 7-million-bushel concrete rail loading elevator in Vincent, IA.

The New Cooperative Inc. facility (515-356-4185) loads 100-car unit trains on a Union Pacific branch line through two separate loading points simultaneously. The loading points are gravity spouts outfitted with Kyoat metering systems. Using automated loadout controls from two points allows workers to load a five-car string in 15 to 20 minutes.

New Cooperative installed a fall protection unit during the fall and winter of 2000-01 and, again, turned to Fall Protection Systems because of its I-beam design. "If someone falls on a cable system, we would have to take it out of service until it could be retested," says Dennis Knight, director of safety and loss control.

The Vincent elevator is one of six rail loading sites the coop operates, all of which will have fall protection installed by the end of 2002. "We built at Vincent first because it was the most potentially dangerous," Knight says. "Because of the way the loadout is set up, workers would have to climb up the side of the railcar and stay on top until the car was ready to move."

The system is a lengthy one, spanning a little over 300 feet or a little more than five railcar lengths, in order to cover both loadout points. In addition to the I-beam system, Fall Protection Systems designed and installed two stairway accesses at each loadout location, and New Coop mounted electronic loadout controls at the top of each staircase. This allows workers to control spout operation without having to stand on top of the railcars, though they still need access to railcars in order to open and seal hatches.

"We also bought individual harnesses for each worker, with shoulder pads for summer use," Knight says. "Some of our employees have a second harness designed to fit over bulky clothes during the winter.

"At first, some of our employees were reluctant to use the system, but when they saw how it freed up their hands to work on top of railcars, they were more accepting. We load in ice, snow, sleet, rain, and hail, and once they get used to the system, they feel safer under those conditions."

Ed Zdrojewski, editor

July/August 2001 Issue of Grain Journal.