Cuzick is an engineer and conductor with the Portland & Western Railroad. The 45-year-old Albany resident spends much of his working day manipulating 3,000-horsepower diesel engines that pull more than a mile of railroad cars nn often by remote control while standing alongside the tracks.

Tuesday morning, as he does nearly every working day, Cuzick guided 109 rail cars from Albany to a sideyard west of Halsey on the old Oregon Electric line near the Georgia-Pacific and Pope and Talbot mills.

Shortly after he climbed out of the cab of the engine, the train was moving again. But Cuzick wasn’t inside — he stood away from the engine and guided it with controls mounted on a small box hanging in front of him.

After Cuzick unhooked the two engines and seven cars from the main train, he slid them forward slowly, then backed them up on the rail sideyard. Next, he guided the two engines back and hooked up the remaining cars before climbing back into the engine for the trip to Junction City and Eugene.

“It was strange at first to see the train moving and I wasn’t on it,” Cuzick said, as he pointed out the various buttons and levers on the control box. “It takes some getting used to. It takes a while to trust the box.”

Virtually everything that Cuzick can control while riding the train can also be controlled with the box nn horn, lights, throttle, brakes, forward and reverse.

Remote-controlled trains can be operated only in special zones that meet Federal Railroad Administration guidelines, according to Portland & Western President Bruce Carswell.

“Typically, the systems are used at sidings and on industrial tracks,” Carswell said.

Cuzick is one of about a dozen engineers — out of 60 employed by Portland & Western — who are also certified to operate remote-controlled trains.

Most are senior engineers, and they must complete classroom and hands-on training to become qualified.

“I’ve been running the remote controls for about two years,” Cuzick said. “I like it. It doesn’t bother me a bit to run it this way. There were some little glitches when we first started, but nothing major.”

Cuzick said that, in effect, he does the work that in the past required two people. Company engineers earn about $65,000 per year.

“It’s just part of my job,” Cuzick said.

In the mid-valley, the Portland & Western also uses remote control when serving shippers in Corvallis, Philomath and in the Monroe area.

The company also operates similar units in Marion and Washington counties.

“We’ve had remote controlled systems in place for about three years,” said John Cyrus, the company’s manager of sales and marketing.

“We haven’t had any safety issues or incidents,” he added. “Our engineers seem to like it. We did not cut jobs when we added the remote-controls units. This actually allowed us to increase our work output without adding people.”

It costs about $45,000 to add the remote-control units to the each engine, Cyrus said.

Remote-controlled trains are popular in Canada, according to Railway Age magazine. One company reported that accident rates were cut nearly in half after remote-control systems were put into place, based on one million hours of service.

A company in Germany has reportedly sold more than 6,000 remote control units internationally. Remote control systems have been used for years on overhead cranes and monorail systems.