By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Employee Wrongful Death Attorney

A yearlong investigation into a fatal rear-end collision on tracks near Red Oak, Iowa (IA), that left two Burlington Northern Santa Fe train crew members dead led the National Transportation Safety Board to conclude that proper scheduling and technology could have prevented the crash or significantly lessened its severity.

View a larger map of where a fatal BNSF train collision occurred near Red Oak,IA.

NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman announced the findings on April 24, 2012. Her agency’s main conclusion was that the collision between the BNSF train and a stopped track maintenance vehicle occurred because the engineer and conductor crewing the moving train had fallen asleep. The two men began their shift at 2:13 am, and the accident happened around 6:00 am. Both had been working on-call schedules and had gone several days without getting adequate sleep.

Hersman went on to note that the rail employees’ fatigue would most likely have not led directly to a fatal crash if their locomotive and rail cars were equipped with positive train control systems. PTC could have automatically slowed the train, reducing the force of the impact, or stopped it altogether.

The NTSB chair also said that that the BNSF accident highlighted the need for rail equipment manufacturers to improve the crashworthiness of modular crew cabs. She promised her agency would be working on those.

In a press release, Hersman said, “Human nature – and our need for sleep – must be respected; it must be addressed. …  Humans are fallible and make mistakes and operational accidents can be prevented with positive train control.”

As a railroad worker injury and wrongful death attorney based in Virginia (VA), I know that PTC has supposed to be coming for all major railroads for some time. I also know that rail corporations — including Amtrak, BNSF, CSX and Norfolk Southern — have been pushing regulators to move back deadlines for PTC implementation. The billion-dollar corporations say installing the safety systems will cost too much. To me, this means the railroads place less value on the health and lives of their employees than required, or even approaching fair in light of the record profits companies like BNSf, CSX and NS have been making for years.

Failing the quick adoption of PTC, I hope BNSF and all other rail operators will at least look at staffing levels and scheduling practices, then make the appropriate adjustments to limit worker fatigue.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Injury Attorney

Federal laws ranging from the Americans With Disabilities Act to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act make it illegal for any business in any industry to use may kinds of information in workers’ private medical files to make hiring, promotion and firing decisions. As corollaries to those rules, employers cannot compel employees to disclose any information about illnesses, injuries, health conditions, doctor visits or ongoing therapies when those situations are not related to workers’ job performance.

Freight railroad giant BNSF Railway intentionally violated all its employees’ federal medical privacy protections when, starting January 1, 2012, the railroad required engineers, conductors, trackmen, rail yard workers and office personnel to share every piece of health information with immediate supervisors. In a discrimination complaint filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen noted that BNSF’s policy on medical disclosure extended to ”medical conditions and/or events that occur or are diagnosed while they are away from work … even if there is no reasonable basis for believing the condition or event has any impact on the employee’s ability to perform his/her job, and even when the employee’s own doctor has placed no limitations on the employee’s job activities.”

The United Transportation Union, along with eight other groups representing rail workers across the United States, also petitioned the EEOC to compel BNSF to rescind the medical reporting policy. The organizations argued that requiring employees to “share doctor’s notes, diagnostic test results and hospital discharge summaries” could serve no other purpose than providing the rail corporation non-job-related health information it could use to make employment decisions.

BNSF announced that it was rescinding the policy — officially listed a Rule 26.3.1 in its employee handbook – in early April. A company spokeswoman told the Lincoln (NE) Journal Star that BNSF wanted only to protect other workers and the public from employees whose health problems might make them unsafe. In that same article, though, a different railroad representative was quoted as confirming to Progressive Railroading that BNSF wanted the private medical records for “expeditious, confidential handling of fitness-for-duty reviews.”

Again: Numerous federal laws explicitly prohibit the use of large categories of medical information for making employment decisions. BNSF was definitely violating workers’ privacy when issuing and enforcing Rule 26.3.1. It attempted to justify the illegal and discriminatory policy by claiming employees had in the past put other people at risk for injury or death because they had health problems they had not disclosed to the company. Such a claim asserted without specific evidence cannot be taken on faith; at the same time, the company’s defense for flouting health privacy laws absolutely convinces everyone that the company’s executives do not trust employees to be honest or value others’ safety.

As a personal injury attorney who regularly helps railroad workers who develop occupational illnesses and get injured on the job. I also strongly suspect that BNSF wanted access to employees’ complete medical records so it could use the information to claim that any work-related injury or disease was caused by a “preexisting condition.” I already know railroads will use just about any defense to avoid liability, so having all of a hurt or sick worker’s medical records would almost certainly be a temptation BNSF could not resist.

I am equally convinced that if BNSF’s Rule 26.3.1 had withstood union objections and EEOC review, Amtrak, CSX, Norfolk Southern and every other rail corporation would soon require their workers to share every piece of health information. That won’t happen for now, but the railroads must be watched closely for their next effort to violate employees’ health privacy rights.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Injured Rail Workers’ Attorney

Easter Sunday 2012 dawned badly for two CSX Transportation employees who were hospitalized with nonlife-threatening injuries after their train collided with a derailed car from a Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad coal train in Gary, Indiana. The cause of the initial derailment remains under investigation, but reports indicate that the CSX train hauling shipping containers from Chicago to Bergen, New Jersey (NJ), was unable to stop in time to avoid hitting the hopper that had fallen into its path from a parallel track near a switching yard.

View a larger map of where a CSX train collided with a derailed car from a regional coal train, sending two crew members to the hospital.

Rescue personnel had to cut CSX crew member from the wreckage, and one of the injured workers suffered a broken leg. Both of the hurt workers were released from the hospital the same day, according to the Northwest Indiana Times.

The accident is at least the second major crash involving CSX freight trains in Indiana this year. On January 7, three of the railroad corporation’s trains collided just north of Valparaiso. Officials cited a breakdown in communications among dispatchers and train crews as the main cause of that accident. Track conditions are being eyed in connection with the most-recent wreck.

Whatever investigators determine to be the root causes of the crashes, I know, as a personal injury attorney based in Virginia (VA) who has helped many CSX employees, that those factors will almost definitely be problems that could have been prevented. Rail companies have high duties to maintain safe working conditions for all employees. That means railroad tracks must be kept in proper repair, traffic and weather hazards must be fully and clearly communicated, and appropriate safety equipment and procedures must be in place for workers to use and follow.

If any of those safeguards were not present in either of the Indiana accidents, CSX should be held accountable for both compensating the people hurt and making safety improvements so similar crashes do not recur.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Railroad Repetitive Stress Injury Attorney

A civil jury award of just less than $1.25 million to a retired CSX Transportation brakeman and engineer who developed debilitating osteoarthritis in both knees has been upheld by a Maryland (MD) appeals court. In ordering the railroad corporation to compensate the man for past and future medical expenses related to the degenerative disease, as well as pain and suffering, judges in Baltimore County noted that “”the Federal Employers’ Liability Act imposes on the defendant railroad a duty to [its] employees and to all of [its] employees including [this plaintiff] to exercise reasonable care to provide the employee with a reasonably safe place in which to work, reasonably safe conditions to work and reasonably safe tools and equipment.”

CSX argued during both the circuit and appeals court cases that provisions of the Federal Railroad Safety Act, or FRSA, spelling out requirements for placing and maintaining gravel on rail beds prohibited rail workers from filing FELA claims for compensation for injuries or health problems blamed on unsafe ballast. As a personal injury attorney in Virginia (VA) whose law firm has helped rail workers win cases involving poorly groomed and graded ballast, I know CSX’s defense was bogus. The jurors and appellate judges in Maryland saw through the railroad’s legal smoke and mirrors, too.

The plaintiff in the case ultimately decided as CSX Transportation v. Pitts began his rail career as a trackman in 1971 and spent the next 32 years as a fireman, conductor and engineer. Each job required him to walk as much as 2 miles each day on gravel beds. The uneven and shifting surface strained his knees to the point that he eventually began suffering muscle and cartilage tears, the grinding of bone on bone and constant pain. Arthritis is one of the most common results of repetitive stress injuries for railroad employees.

There is no question that repetitive stresses and occupational illnesses — whether respiratory, such as mesothelioma, or degenerative, such as spinal disc damage — are grounds for FELA lawsuits. Despite this, rail companies will often try to avoid liability for not protecting employees’ lives and health. I am pleased to see that CSX was held accountable this time.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Injured Rail Employee Attorney

After an Amtrak train collided with a tractor-trailer sitting across tracks near Alpaugh, Calfiornia (CA), the engineer controlling the locomotive went to a hospital for treatment of a back injury. Two passengers also sustained minor injuries and were treated at the scene.

According to KNSF-TV ABC30, the truck’s driver did not see or hear the train approaching as he stopped his big rig at a stop sign near a grade crossing. The trucker also failed to notice a gate lowering across his flatbed trailer, which was still in the train’s path. The engineer tried to slow and sounded his horn to no avail.

While I primarily represent railroad employees who suffer on-the-job injuries in Virginia (VA), North Carolina (NC) and Florida (FL), this train-truck collision caught my attention because of the incident’s similarity to a case my firm handled in 2005. Our client was a CSX conductor trainee who sustained a severe spinal injury when a truck caused a crash on rail yard tracks. She had to abandon her rail career, and we were able to help her recover $650,000 in damages.

Whenever accidents involving large commercial trucks and locomotives occur, injuries or fatalities are practically inevitable. I wish the Amtrak engineer a full and speedy recovery. I also hope the California accident remind all drivers of the dangers they, rail workers and passengers face at crossings.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Railroad Cancer Attorney

In his latest post to our firm’s Virginia personal injury lawyers’ website, my colleague Rick Shapiro questioned the wisdom of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that significantly restricts sick railroad employees’ rights to sue the makers of dangerous and defective products under the provisions of the Locomotive Inspection Act. To read more, click over to “Rail Workers With Mesothelioma to Find Suing Asbestos Manufacturers Tougher.”

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Worker Wrongful Death Attorney

Three people died, including two engineers, when the locomotive and all five other cars of a VIA Rail passenger train derailed and flipped in Burlington Ontario, on February 26, 2012. According VIA, which is the Canadian equivalent of Amtrak, the third fatality was a railroad trainee who was riding along to observe.

The Toronto Star, which also noted that a 19-car train derailed in almost the exact same location in 2008, described the latest wreck this way: “The train left the tracks near Plains Rd. and King Rd. When it stopped, six cars lay zigzagged off the tracks, at least three flipped onto their sides and two lodged up against a building. Two cars appeared as though they had been snapped clean apart.”

Reports on the numbers of passengers and surviving crew members are still coming in. The day after the derailment, it was known that at least 45 people had gone to hospitals and that at least 3 of the casualties had been injured so badly they had to be airlifted from the scene.

Officials told the newspaper that track work was under way where the VIA Rail train ran off the rails. They also said the accident occurred while the train was switching from the closed track to an open one.

As a railroad employee injury and wrongful death lawyer based in Virginia (VA), my deepest condolences go out to the families of the train crew members who died in this derailment. I also wish all the injured speedy recoveries.

While it’s much too early to name a specific cause — investigations of rail crashes involving loss of life can take years – I know that ensuring the safety and health of all passengers and workers must always be the highest priority of any railroad corporation. Whatever lessons are learned from this derailment, I hope they are implemented quickly to prevent a similar tragedy.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Attorney for Railroad Accident Victims

Failure to warn the train’s crew about a track washout, combined with a long-term refusal to fix storm water runoff problems, caused a fatal Canadian National railroad derailment in Cherry Valley, Illinois (IL). Those are the essential findings from a 20-month National Transportation Safety Board investigation into a June 2009 grade-crossing accident that caused an ethanol-fueled fire that claimed the life of one woman trapped in a nearby stopped car and badly burned several other drivers and passengers.

View a larger map of Cherry Valley, IL, where a 2009 CN train derailemnt and ethanol fire killed one and injured several.

Working with the Federal Railroad Administration and the cooperation of CN officials, the NTSB determined that the rail company knew the track had been washed away at least an hour before the deadly wreck and that at least two other storms had taken out the rails at the crossing in Winnebago County near Rockford. The agency recommended that Canadian Railroad and all other rail corporations update and strengthen policies and practices regarding “internal emergency communications, weather-alert policies and rules, tank-car vulnerabilities, inspection and maintenance of storm water detention ponds, the accuracy of train consist information, construction standards for underground pipelines at railroad crossings.”

CN has already settled combined wrongful death and injury claims from one family affected by the derailment for $36.2 million. A spokesman for the railroad also told the Chicago Tribune that his company had completely revised its weather reporting for train crews and addressed design issues at crossings in flood-prone areas. The spokesman also said, “If good things can come out of tragedy, we hope the recommendations are put into place as quickly as possible, and that they help make sure CN’s safety culture gets better.”

The real question, though, is why Canadian National didn’t take action after the previous washouts that didn’t result in tragedy. Or, since it did not, why did the company not act after a similar weather-related accident in Mississippi (MS) in April 2009 — two months before the Illinois derailment.

This blog post from fellow FELA attorney Joseph M. Miller, with whom I have collaborated in cases heard in New Orleans, provides the full details of the Mississippi crash that left an engineer severely injured. It’s worth reading, but I’ll provide the minor spoiler of revealing that CN failed to warn the engineer and other crew members that a storm had knocked a huge tree across the tracks.

NTSB’s recommendations seem particularly appropriate for the passenger and freight rail lines that operate in Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia (VA), where I practice railroad law. The tracks owned and used by Amtrak, CSX and Norfolk Southern are definitely at risk for flooding and damage from the thunderstorms, nor’easters and tropical storms that regularly buffet Hampton Roads. If CN can be taken at its word that the company has already begun implementing changes to protect crews and the public from weather-related accidents, I hope all other rail corporations do the same.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Crossing Train Crash Attorney

An Amtrak engineer and conductor, a tractor-trailer driver and seven train passengers suffered injuries requiring hospital treatment when their train and truck collided in Michigan (MI) on February 1, 2012. According to the Detroit News, the passenger train making its way from Detroit to Chicago was traveling at 79 mph when it struck the semi that was stuck on the rails. An Amtrak spokesperson told the newspaper the gates and other warning systems along the Norfolk Southern-owned tracks were functioning at the tie of the wreck.

None of the reported injuries were life-threatening. Two of the Amtrak rail cars derailed and significant damage was done to nearby structures.

View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

This collision at an at-grade rail crossing in Leoni Township came as news circulated that the passenger railroad and other rail companies are fighting federal rules requiring the installation of crash-avoidance technology known as positive train control. PTC allows dispatchers and route managers with emergency information about track and weather condition to remotely slow or stop trains before accidents occur.

My Virginia personal injury lawyer colleagues and I have urged railroads to adhere to existing Federal Railroad Administration mandates for deploying PTC technology on all trains and tracks by 2015, but legislation pending in the U.S. Congress would push that deadline back to 2020 — just in time for the billion-dollar corporations to seek another extension.

Amtrak, BNSF, CSX, NS and other rail companies claim installing PTC would be too expensive. These same corporations are expected to spend an estimated $13 billion on adding and upgrading tracks, rail yards and rolling stock during 2012. Those expenditures appear to be almost entirely aimed at increasing the railroads’ ever-growing record profits rather than increasing safety for rail employees and passengers.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Rick Shapiro, Carolina Railroad Accident Attorney

Pointing to five major rear-end collisions involving freight trains during 2011, the National Transportation Safety Board has published two related safety recommendations regarding the importance of lowering speeds and increasing distances between trains sharing tracks and moving in the same direction. According to an agency press release, safety requirements for a following train include “being prepared to stop within one-half the range of vision.” The NTSB also stressed that “complete understanding of and strict compliance with restricted speed requirements are absolutely mandatory to prevent catastrophic train collisions.”

The following wrecks, which left numerous railroad employees injured and killed, raised NTSB’s concerns:

• Red Oak, Iowa (IA), April 17, 2011, BNSF
• Low Moor, Virginia (VA), May 21, 2011, CSX
• Mineral Springs, North Carolina (NC), May 24, 2011, CSX
• DeWitt, New York (NY), July 6, 2011, CSX
• DeKalb, Indiana (IN), August 19, 2011, Norfolk Southern

This memorial video shows the aftermath of the CSX rear-end crash in Mineral Springs in which an engineer ad a conductor on one train lost their lives and the two crew members on the other train suffered injuries requiring hospital treatment:

Recognizing that employers have as great a responsibility as rail workers for ensuring that safe track speeds and train following distances are posted, communicated and adhered to, the NTSB is asking the Association of American Railroads and the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association to emphasize these safety messages. On the employee side, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the United Transportation Union have also been contacted to spread the word about the importance of observing speed limits when sharing tracks.

As a Virginia-based railroad accident and FELA lawyer, I have seen firsthand the serious injuries that can result when trains collide or must stop suddenly and unexpectedly even at very low speeds. In light of the growing number of rear-end crashes attributable, at least in part, to excess speed and following too closely, I encourage railroads and rail employees to work together to make sure speed and distance rules are clarified and followed.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.