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Delaware signs confidentiality agreements with Class I railroads on oil train shipments
Or all could track safely each movement. http://www.atcsmon.com/
Also, emergency responders need to know where the manifest list is located and the emergency cut offs.
Another State using sound reasoning. Local and State emergency responders will be kept informed AND are BEING TRAINED.
Drew Gould - CSX is in the midst of a determined and concentrated effort to change from radio-based traffic control (which ATCS can read) to Satelite-based (which ATCS CANNOT read) so they can farm out the primary control of their railroad to a third-party company. Soon, all CSX routes will be dark on ATCS. This is being done so that, as failures occur - as a few years back which basically shut down all MARC and VRE routes out of Washington, D.C. (you know, where it actually affected our political ‘leaders’ and their staff), so CSX took a lot of heat for their failure. As a result, they de-centralized their dispatching centers and are farming out the communications. That way, they can blame someone else AND write off some of the costs as a ‘cost of doing business’. Unfortunately, this is a true shame for railfans. For example, the coming move next week of the C&O steam locomotive #1309 will be next to impossible to track. Fortunately, TRAINS has a webcam on the move, starting this past Thursday with the lift of the locomotive onto the depressed-well flat car that will carry the locomotive, account CSX is keeping ALL older equipment off of their rails - thereby excluding most all historical rail equipment moves and excursions getting in the way of their, usually, poorly coordinated freight train movements. Their dispatchers have the un-enviable task of moving the freight regardless of the special moves at the high cost of them and Amtrak movements as required by law. The dispatchers are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Poor guys!!
Drew Gould - CSX is in the midst of a determined and concentrated effort to change from radio-based traffic control (which ATCS can read) to Satelite-based (which ATCS CANNOT read) so they can farm out the primary control of their railroad to a third-party company. Soon, all CSX routes will be dark on ATCS. This is being done so that, as failures occur - as a few years back which basically shut down all MARC and VRE routes out of Washington, D.C. (you know, where it actually affected our political ‘leaders’ and their staff), so CSX took a lot of heat for their failure. As a result, they de-centralized their dispatching centers and are farming out the communications. That way, they can blame someone else AND write off some of the costs as a ‘cost of doing business’. Unfortunately, this is a true shame for railfans. For example, the coming move next week of the C&O steam locomotive #1309 will be next to impossible to track. Fortunately, TRAINS has a webcam on the move, starting this past Thursday with the lift of the locomotive onto the depressed-well flat car that will carry the locomotive, account CSX is keeping ALL older equipment off of their rails - thereby excluding most all historical rail equipment moves and excursions getting in the way of their, usually, poorly coordinated freight train movements. Their dispatchers have the un-enviable task of moving the freight regardless of the special moves at the high cost of them and Amtrak movements as required by law. The dispatchers are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Poor guys!!
Just for information, Delaware accepts oil trains along two short routes. Norfolk Southern runs them along the AMTRAK Corridor to Newark and than about ten miles to a destination refinery at Delaware City. CSX operates them for about twelve miles across the northern tip of the state along the old Royal Blue Line as far as Philadelphia where there has been a messy derailment on a bridge, no less. The concern, given the explosive potential of these trains, as demonstrated at Lac Megantic, was that it was better to keep movement information confidential to keep it away from terrorists. I don’t know if this is actually worthwhile given the open air nature of railroading and the fact that the trains arrive instate on a reasonably predictable basis but that was at least one rationale for not informing the public. Both routes run through densely populated areas and citizens are complaining about noise and blocked road crossings.
Wouldn’t publishing a “schedule” for a train be mis-information to a terrorist? It’s not like anything on rails in the US “keeps” it’s schedule…
A terrorist sitting by the tracks can observe when the train is coming and alert a co-terrorist somewhere else down the line…
Just seems un-necessary to me…