Chemical traffic on the rails is more common thaan one would expect. Coincidentally, the rails are the safest and most exspensive means to transport chemicals.
It can and can’t be. In fact a few years ago, near Kansas, a UP train derailed blew up creating a mushroom cloud, and leaked acid into the water supply! People were forced to evacuate their houses! People were killed in the inciddent (nearly 100)!
Why is it so common if it is more expensive? That doesn’t compute.
Try moving it by truck, Think its expensive by rail try by road. Smaller lots more vehicles to move it and heres the best! You need permits and special routings for certain products.
Next time the media is getting down on railroad safety, we’ll have to bring these statisitcs out.
Railroads Move Hazardous Materials Safer than any other Mode
• Rail is the safest method of shipping hazardous materials. Railroads have an outstanding track record in safely delivering hazardous materials – 99.998 percent of hazardous materials carloads arrive at their destination without a release caused by a train accident. Hazmat accident rates have declined 90 percent since 1980 and 49 percent since 1990.
• The alternative is to ship hazardous material by truck instead of rail, but rail is 16 times safer than truck. Based on our best information, between 1981 and 2004, there were 10 deaths related to hazardous materials transported by rail, and 278 deaths involving hazardous materials transported by truck.
• Railroads carry an estimated 22 percent of the chlorine that is produced in the U.S. and 66 percent of the chlorine that is transported. Railroads carry about 1.7 million carloads of hazardous materials annually, including about 35,000 carloads of chlorine.
• Chlorine is used to purify more than half of the nation’s water supplies and in 85 percent of all pharmaceuticals.
I found this hard to believe, so I did six searches on the NTSB’s Railroad Accident page (“Kansas”, “explosion”, “BLEVE”, “KS”, “hazard”, and “fatal”) and could not find a report on such an incident. Where did you hear this?
I only found two incidents that resemble your description. The first was a CN derailment in Tamaroa, Illinois. There were no deaths and only one injury (during the clean up). The second was a MRL derailment that released some chlorine and other haz-mat near Alberton, Montana. There were several injuries and one fatality.
Alstom,
Your report of Ax in Kansas is false. Most years there are zero, zip, no fatalaties due to transport of haxardous materials by rail. Last year’s Granitville will set the one year fatailty record for the part 3 or 4 decades, probably more.
Mac
from what i could gather fromhis post it seems it was a acid train. and acid wont blow up.
Let’s face it, you’re safer sitting at the crossing watching the placards go by than you will be once the gates go back up.
Even on a little travelled branch line, you’ll find a fair number of chemicals being carried, ranging from the relatively benign to stuff that will curl your hair, without actual contact with the chemical. According to reports I got, one chemical that was spilled at a derailment near here eventually burned down the disposal plant they took the stuff they cleaned up to…
I was researching our local line (by sitting trackside and taking notes, of course) for possible HazMat scenarios and came up with plenty of “methyl ethyl awful” for the list.
The accident mentioned in alstom’s post never happened. Alstom doesn’t have his facts straight.
Dave H.
When you mix amonia with bleach you get a highly poisonous gas. I have never taken chemistry, but I would not want to trust the result if acid is somehow mixed with other chemicals as a result of a railroad accident.[xx(]
CANADADIANPACIFIC2816
LOL…where did he get that one- nearly 100 people died “near” Kansas in a chlorine gas explosion. Can you imagine?
Is it safer to have this stuff on the highways? No. How many drunks and distracted soccer moms would it take to cut some of these tank trucks off at 70 per, causing chain reaction accidents like I see all the time here in Michigan? Our maximum speed for trucks is 55 (rarely enforced). The thought of a driver carrying a load of poisonous gas falling asleep and hitting a bridge abutment at 70 is a sobering thought. Many folks say, “Oh, that wouldn’t happen.” I do a lot of driving and see a large number of truck accidents.
Which brings me to another topic- here in Michigan, roughly 25% of the grade crossing collisions involve semis. That seems to be a disproportionate number on the surface, but I see more and more of them driving around downed gates- or right through them. Wanna see what happens if a poison gas trailer gets struck by an Amtrak train? I don’t.
The relative safety of rail shipment is very well proven, and well commented on above. The problem is not the safety of rail shipment, but the perception: for example, here in the great State of Connecticut, we wreck two or three semis per day, not to mention a wide assortment of passenger vehicles and smaller trucks. Does it hit the news? Only if it ties up traffic, and then only on the traffic report (unless it’s really spectacular). Do these accidents create haz-mat incidents? Most of them, if only fuel oil spills.
On the other hand, we haven’t had a freight railroad accident of any size at all in at least a decade (and there are freight trains in Connecticut still!).
I think that hazmat spills involved with derailments are big news primarily because they are so uncommon. Fortunately, most attempts by local governments to ban chemical shipments by rail are overridden by the commerce clause. It’s quite obvious that the local powers that be aren’t aware of the truck traffic in hazardous materials down their main streets, including the gasoline tanker delivering to the filling station in the middle of town.
They thought shelf couplers would solve all of that, but how does a coupler stop something from rupturing or exploding?
The shelf couplers were intended to stop one of the major causes of tank punctures: coupler overrides in a derailment. For that purposed, they work just fine, since it is virtually impossible for a car with a shelf (double shelf) coupler to be overridden by the adjacent car.
A sort of added and somewhat unintentional benefit is that it is somewhat less likely for the cars to uncouple at all, reducing the chance that the adjacent car will hit the tank.
In small derailments, this has saved a lot of grief.
In larger derailments, the forces involved are great enough that the couplers don’t help much – but then nothing much would (remember a few days ago there was a low speed side-swipe which successfully damaged a bunch of M1A2 Abrams tanks!)
Jamie,
I used to work hazmat derailments. Shelf couplers to not prevent override. In an “at speed” derailment the head of one or the other couplers breaks off the shank right behind the head.
Shelf couplers have probably been effective in yard situations (think Decatur). Headshields have, in my opinion, been more effective in eliminating head punctures than have shelf couplers.
Mac
I completely agree and didn’t mean to imply otherwise – in an ‘at speed’ derailment, all bets are off. The forces and energy involved are just too much. I do think head shields have helped a great deal and are certainly more effective in at speed situations.
Are shelf couplers required for beer tankers? [:p]
No