Grain Entrapment and Engulfment: Rail Cars

By Craig Macklin

Well, this sad news was released recently: “Worker Engulfed in Rail Car…” which made me revisit my prior post to dig into data some more.  Once again, I went to the data set provided by NPR Buried in Grain. This time I looked only for “rail car” in the incidents and found two in the data set.  While the two incidents in the data set both correspond to workers trying to clear clogs while unloading the rail car hoppers, this new incident does not.  Its cause was related to the worker slipping and falling while loading the car.  Either way, these incidents are terrible, tragic and preventable with proper safety precautions and training.  Rail car vibrators are one tool to help prevent bin or hopper entry during unloading.  I encourage anyone following these continued incidents to look into resources available from organizations such as the Grain Handling Safety Coalition.


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