140 Crew Members Strike at Wheeling & Lake Erie Over Managers Working Trains

Some 140 engineers and conductors at the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway walked off the job at noon on Wednesday, Nov. 12, after the railroad assigned managers to perform conductors' work, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said.

The union put picket lines up at railroad locations across the network. It posted images of protesting workers that appeared to be taken at the railroad's headquarters in Brewster, Ohio.

At stake is a regional freight railroad that runs 840 miles of track — a network stretching from Hagerstown, Maryland, through West Virginia and Pennsylvania, serving Pittsburgh and northeastern Ohio, and reaching Toledo. The walkout threatens to disrupt an important regional freight link serving steel mills and other industrial customers across a four-state footprint.

Why are the crews out?

The strike centers on W&LE's insistence on assigning managers to work as conductors, BLET said. The union contends the practice violates both its collective bargaining agreement and a federal court order dating to 2013.

That's not a random date. In the earlier dispute, the union said, W&LE sought to replace conductors with managers and, in some instances, to operate trains with a single crew member. BLET argued then that those practices broke its contract and long-established safety rules. The current confrontation, in the union's telling, revives the same fight — and the railroad is now defying a court order that grew out of it.

The union's statement did not include the underlying court order or details of the current manager assignments. FreightWaves has reached out to W&LE management for comment.

What does this change for shippers?

BLET characterizes the railroad's conduct as a "major dispute" under the Railway Labor Act — a classification the union says permits immediate "self-help," including a strike, rather than the lengthy cooling-off processes that govern minor disputes. That means no swift federal intervention is guaranteed, and industrial customers on the line — steel mills prominent among them — face open-ended service risk until the crews return.

The carrier's ownership adds another layer. W&LE is owned by FTAI Infrastructure Inc. (NASDAQ: FIP), which acquired the railroad in 2025 for $1.05 billion in a deal approved earlier this year.

'Thumbed their nose at the federal courts'

BLET National President Mark Wallace, who also serves as president of the Teamsters Rail Conference, framed the walkout as a matter of contract enforcement and safety, not just economics.

"Our members at the Wheeling & Lake Erie have the full support of our national union, as well as the Teamsters," Wallace said in a statement.

He went further on the courtroom dimension. "This employer has not only violated our contract and compromised safety standards; they also have arrogantly thumbed their nose at the federal courts," Wallace said. "We will protect the members we represent and the communities this railroad serves by shutting down train operations until this railroad's management abides by court orders and the terms of our agreement."

That last line is the operative one for shippers: the union has explicitly committed to keeping train operations shut down until management complies with the court order and the contract. With no public timetable from either side and management yet to respond publicly, steel and industrial freight moving over the 840-mile network should brace for disruption that could persist — or escalate if the Teamsters broaden support actions — until the 2013 court order is enforced.