Roughly 140 locomotive engineers and conductors walked off the job at Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway on Wednesday, halting train operations across the regional network that connects Northeast Ohio industry to the rest of the country. The union says the strike began at noon with picket lines at key locations, and it has no plan to call it off until the railroad changes course.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen says the walkout was triggered by the railroad’s use of managers to perform conductors’ work, a practice the union calls a breach of its contract. According to BLET, picket lines went up at key locations beginning at noon on Wednesday. The union contends the practice also violates a federal court order dating back to 2013, though those claims reflect the union’s position rather than an independent legal finding.
BLET first vice president Gary Best said about 140 engineers and conductors established picket lines at four or five locations in Ohio, including sites in Canton and Akron, as reported by Yahoo News. Best said that in the week before the strike, the railway ran a train with two non-bargaining managers instead of a conductor and locomotive engineer. A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the outlet reported.
A Dispute the Union Says It Has Seen Before
Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, headquartered in Brewster, Ohio, provides freight connections linking regional communities and businesses to larger national rail networks, according to Jordan Miller News. BLET says the railway operates trains on 840 miles of track running from Hagerstown, Maryland, through West Virginia and Pennsylvania, serving Pittsburgh and cities in Northeast Ohio, and terminating in Toledo — though the station's report describes the network as extending over 840 miles of track. FTAI Infrastructure Inc. acquired the railway in 2025 for $1.05 billion, per the same account.
This is not the first time the union and the railroad have clashed over this exact issue. Best said the last time Wheeling & Lake Erie workers went on strike was in 2013, over what he described as exactly the same issue, and that the earlier labor dispute was settled in federal court. BLET likewise says the 2013 dispute between the union and the railway also resulted in a strike. Separately, a SMART Union page describes more than 100 locomotive engineers and trainmen striking the railway and says a temporary restraining order ended that daylong walkout.
Union Leader Says Shutdown Will Continue
Mark Wallace, BLET national president and president of the Teamsters Rail Conference, said the union would keep train operations shut down until management abides by court orders and the terms of its agreement. “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,” Wallace said, according to BLET.
Federal labor law generally requires extensive negotiations, mediation and other procedures before railroad workers may legally strike under the Railway Labor Act, which governs labor relations across the industry. Major disputes under that law may allow unions to pursue labor action, including strikes, in certain circumstances, and BLET argues the alleged contractual violations qualify as a major dispute that permits its members to strike immediately without completing the usual negotiation and mediation steps.
The walkout threatens to disrupt an important regional freight link serving steel mills and other industrial customers across the railroad’s four-state network, according to FreightWaves. As of Wednesday afternoon, BLET had not announced a date for resumption of train operations.
