Run-Through Switches Aren’t a Training Problem — They’re a Design Problem
Written by Dana Haake, President, Industrial Track Solutions
Dateline: December 2024.
I received a phone call from a longtime rail customer with a question many of you will recognize:
“How soon can you get here to fix our track? Somebody ran through switch #2 again.”
As Vice President of a small, family-owned railroad contracting company, calls like this are a frequent part of the business. Repairs mean revenue and I was happy for the business, but this was the third time that year the same customer had called about the same switch, for the same reason.
That night, after supervising the repair and speaking with the customer’s track manager, a simple but frustrating thought kept circling my mind:
If our current switch indicators and training really worked, why are we still fixing the same mistakes over and over?
Why are we still relying on targets that require interpretation?
Why don’t we simply light the safe path of a switch so there’s no guesswork at all?
That question became the foundation for what would later become SwitchPath Lights™.
Over the past 13 months, I’ve spent a lot of time studying the root causes that lead to switches being repeatedly run through — not just the surface-level explanations, but the human factors behind them. While our story of collaborating with patent attorneys, engineers, and marketing teams is a chapter for another day, this post focuses on the why.
Here are the root causes I believe the industry has been missing — and how a different design approach addresses them.
1. Multitasking, Complacency, and Distraction
Engineers and conductors are highly trained. They know how to interpret targets, read points, and understand switch alignment. Ask any experienced railroader to look at a traditional indicator and they’ll tell you which route the train will take, without fail.
But they’re also human.
Fatigue, distraction, and complacency are part of real-world operations. Add the need to interpret a visual signal — even a simple one — and you’ve introduced a mental step that can fail at the decision point.
Today’s mitigation strategies — “Verify the points, mind the gap,” “look twice,” “point to the safe track” — are well-intentioned, but they still rely on interpretation. And interpretation requires attention. Our brains aren’t wired to multitask as effectively as we think they are.
If traditional targets and long-standing industry guidelines requiring conductors look directly at the points before navigating a switch truly solved this problem, we wouldn’t still be repairing the same switch for the same reason year after year.
A Simpler Decision Model
Our approach removes that extra mental step. Instead of interpreting a target, operators simply follow the illuminated path.
To demonstrate this, we’ve created a simple test you can try yourself (“Don’t take our word for it”):
Ask someone who knows nothing about railroads to visit our website (www.industrialtracksolutions.com), click Learn More, and ask them to point to the track on the video they believe is safe to travel on — with no instructions.
They get it immediately.
Now have them try the same exercise at a competitor’s website using traditional switch indicators. The difference is obvious.
And for seasoned railroaders, we have this to offer:
At our NRC-REMSA booth, we asked experienced professionals to take a short comparison test that asked if it was safe to proceed through images of switches with both traditional targets, followed by images of the same switches with our system. Then we had them repeat the test while constantly being distracted — simple questions, basic math, anything to divide their attention while taking the test.
Every single time, performance with traditional indicators declined significantly. The SwitchPath Light™ system did not.
(Don’t believe us- try this yourself with someone distracting you. The test can be also be found here or on our website by selecting the “Click to Try SwitchPath Lights”)
When distraction increases, clarity matters more than training.
As a parent of two teenage sons, I’ve also seen firsthand how shortened attention spans have become the norm — not the exception. Future rail employees are growing up in a world of constant stimulation. Designing safety systems that acknowledge this reality isn’t optional. It’s necessary.
(And yes — my sons approved this mention, with appropriate eye-rolling.)
2. Ignoring the Ground Crew Perspective
Most switch position indicators were designed with two viewpoints in mind:
Facing points from the locomotive view
Trailing points from the locomotive view
That makes sense for locomotive engineers and vehicle operators. But what about conductors on the ground?
From many positions:
You may see the wrong side of a target (e.g., holding a switch handle while looking at the target)
You may see two sides at once (e.g., looking at a target from an angle)
The stand or points may be blocked by equipment such as a car.
You may be facing away from the switch entirely.
All of these scenarios introduce risk — and they’re far more common than many designs account for.
Seeing the Alignment, No Matter Where You Stand
By illuminating the actual aligned track, the system removes ambiguity:
No multi-faced targets to misread
No need to see the points or target (this system is the only one on the market that allows you to determine point position without looking at the points or target)
No confusion when equipment blocks the view of points or a target
No loss of clarity in bright daylight
Many products look impressive in nighttime photos and is the reason competitors often show pictures of their products taken at night. But in full sunlight — or when hit with direct locomotive headlights — their visibility often drops dramatically.
Brightness and contrast matter. And they matter all the time, not just after dark.
3. Over-Focusing on Automation
I’m a big supporter of automation. Remove human error where possible — that’s a smart goal.
At this year’s NRC-ARMEA exhibition, I spent plenty of time admiring an automated switch machine produced by my booth neighbor, Advanced Rail Systems. It was an impressive machine and paired with a sensor, would end the need for a system like ours. Machines like these are impressive, well-engineered, and highly effective.
They’re also expensive.
For most rail yards and industrial track owners, the high cost of automating each switch in a yard far outweighs the perceived financial impact of switch run throughs. I have yet to meet even one of these track owners who doesn’t want to see this problem go away in their yards but at the same time, the cost they said they are willing to pay, on average, was surprising low. That means human decision-making in these locations will likely continue into the future.
So the real question becomes:
How do we make those human decisions safer, simpler, and more reliable?
Our approach with SwitchPath Lights™ is to offer a clearer visual system that reduces interpretation — without the cost of full automation.
Final Thought
Run-through switches aren’t just a training issue.
They’re not just a compliance issue.
And they’re not just a maintenance issue.
They’re a design issue.
When the visual information itself requires interpretation, mistakes are inevitable — especially in real-world conditions where distraction, fatigue, and imperfect visibility exist.
Better design doesn’t eliminate responsibility.
It supports better decisions.
And in rail operations, better decisions protect people, equipment, and productivity.