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BNSF reopens North Dakota main line following oil train derailment
What is the commonality of the oil train derailments? Are they all mid-train cars that derail? Are the derailments mainly in isolated locations? Does the derailment occur when the brakes have applied to slow down? These are just a few of the questions that I have not heard being answered yet.
They think it’s a broken wheel. What find interesting is that many trucks have a made in Mexico
Cast on the side of the trucks.
KK,
You’ve just impugned a country and its citiizens.
Did you then, or are you now suspicious of Alco and GE trucks cast with “Dofasco” or GE 's delivered in the
early 2000’s having trucks cast with “U of SA?”
I can see pre-judging, PREJUDICE…
Francis:
Sorry I am just making an observation. I’m a conductor on a class 3 and when I’m walking the ballast I notice that many trucks are made in Mexico. Wish they were made in the USA. By the way my engineer is from Mexico. Fine engineer. My former 1st LT is from Mexico as well. My best friend. Careful how you toss that race card around.
I am not a conspiracy theorist but it seems that either the news are paying special attention to oil train derailments or the railroads have gotten sloppy in handling oil trains or maybe oil trains are being targeted. The increased frequency of oil train disasters appears to have increased with the falling oil prices and arrival of new anti-American organizations. As of five years ago i don’t seem to recall oil train any accidents. They must have happened but i can’t remember them. Now we seem to have them every few months. As the news dies down from one , another happens. To much coincidence.
The US became increasingly self sufficient in oil production over the past decade due to successful deployment of fracking technology. The new fields are in places with little or no pipeline capacity to transport the crude. The growth of oil train traffic is a direct result of massive increases in domestic oil production.
Trains derail all the time for a variety of reasons. Audiences, and therefore news organizations, don’t really care about a pile of crumpled box cars and hoppers in a Midwest corn field. A derailed oil train offering spectacular video with fire, explosions and black smoke is entirely different particularly when it happens in a populated area. People worry so the media is all over it. Even in a rural area, dramatic video drives national news organizations to spend time with the story. When a derailment happens in a remote area, environmental contamination becomes the focus of the story.
The railroads have plenty of oil trains and they all seem to explode and burn when they come off the tracks at typical line speeds. The volume of oil traffic means a train will come off the tracks every few months and deliver up dramatic video to the news organizations. More oil production means more oil trains, more derailments, more explosions and fires, and more news coverage. It’s as simple as that.
Roger K,
It is not a “roger” to state it’s as simple as that.
If you know that before this fracked Brakken crude was extruded, crude was the safest petroleum to ship…
Brakken’s volatile inclusions cancel the simplicity.Non-Bakken is about as dangerous as a bowl of pancake batter… .
Your last paragraph was wholly correct until you implied that the inevitability of Bakken train conflagrations was our countriy’s fate…
Refine out and remove from the Bakken “crude” before shipping it, the volatile flammable and explosive chemicals…no problems…ship trainloads of it…
Roy Bonn please read my questions from the day of the incident. I’m convinced basic physics is the cause due to a higher center of gravity on oil trains versus your other types of freight. The higher center of gravity would naturally put more stress on the flanges on curves, I won’t repeat the rest of my questions here. If the manufacturer follows the steel spec it doesn’t matter who makes it, that’s what the buyer’s QC department is for, to check for that sort of thing.