The Federal Railroad Administration has issued a safety advisory to notify freight railroads about the circumstances of the head-on collision at Hoxie, AR. and to discusses the risks that automated inputs that reset alerter warning timing cycles pose. A few of Union Pacific Railroad’s locomotives that are equipped with alerters had the horn sequencer reset without direct engineer action which reduces the alerters’ effectiveness. Union Pacific Railroad has taken steps to modify its locomotives in order to resolve the issue.
Currently, FRA is not aware of any additional incidents concerning locomotives that are equipped with alerters that reset without direct engineer action. However, it is urging all freight railroads to review the operations of any locomotive equipped with alerters and modify them as needed to ensure no system resets the alerter warning timing cycle without direct engineer action.
