Locally, there is something in the news about possible health issues concerning a brownfield area downtown along the railroad tracks. The old Milwaukee Road yard was built on top of a filled in swamp. It had been converted to a junkyard when the Milwaukee went away. Some transients had burned down the roundhouse that was full of car parts. Then, after 100+ years of yucky stuff soaking into the ground next to the river, the city bought the land for redevelopment.
As the city spent millions of tax dollars to clean up the mess, they shipped hundreds of truckloads of contaminated soil to a site in Utah, Nevada, or somewhere out there. All while an active rail line- with a siding- ran through the middle of the property. It seems like long hauls of heavy, low-value (worthless dirt in this case) freight long distances would be right up the railroad’s alley. Are railroads ever used for hauling contaminated dirt?
The fact that they felt that trucks gave them better value is amazing.
There was one site in Oak Park/Forest Park that was specifically set up for removal of contaminated dirt from an area; it was loaded into containers, which went on to CSX trains for some site in Michigan, as I recall. Usually gons are the preferred mode; more often than not tarps cover the loads.
I may not be right on target here but the contaminated dirt would still be considered a hazardous material and require special handling. I would assume that covered hoppers would be needed to handle the material and would have to be cleaned pretty thoroughly before being returned to service. All of this drives up costs, which would have to be built into what might be a one-time-only rate.
Jeff: Wine-Door gons (high bottom /hinged bottom cars, hardly made or seen anymore) still move dirt the old fashioned way. Plenty of burrito cars (gons with dirt surrounded by plastic sheeting or fabric liners) out there as well as the containers.
All the results of the dredging of the Hudson River (GE/PCBs) travelled somewhere by rail - I don’t know where it ended up.
I’ve seen “burrito cars” before, and in the recent past.
I know of a site in a former NYC rail yard where they went down some 12 feet and were still digging up “dirty dirt.” And that’s mostly fill there, too.
Ding ding! We have the winner. The city also lacked patience. The previous owners probably did not have the money to fix the problems that they inherited from the railroad. They probably got the property at a fire sale price. In the end, I doubt anybody up the chain had any money to fix this. Consequently, fools rush in where angels fear to tread, especially if they are spending someone else’s money.
There’s never money to pay for the clean up, but there’s money to pay for the lawyers to avoid paying for the clean up. The legal bill is probably a bargain compared to the cleaning bill.
try Milwaukee’s CMC-Heartland industries case = Greedy/OPM pushy developer + greedy/tax hungry/dumb local politicians = City paying to remediate brownfields…
(Convenient to always blame railroads for dirty dirt. Doesn’t always pass the smell test. Railroads frequently blamed for things out of their control or accepted practice changes over the years)
Short answer is that a junkyard also added to the mix of whatever is in the dirt. Reality is you could pay lawyers until the cows come home and probably not get a penny from whoever should rightfully be paying. The city just jumped right in and said “Hey- this would be a neat place envision something real cool”.
Most dirty dirt is shipped in gons, typically ex coal gons or open top containers that look like dump truck beds. IN both cases they were covered with tarps. I can’t think of a single shipment that used covered hoppers.
Yup…NOS class 9…we have a PTRA customer that handles dirty dirt all the time, they burn it up!
The dirt arrives in what looks like smallish dumpsters that fit on a spine car, one designed just for these containers/dumpsters, they stack like intermodal boxes, and have tarps on top to keep the dirt in.
Since dirty dirt and such contaminants need to be encapsulated, I wonder if the fine folks of (insert city name here) thought about encapsulating-in-place. You know, like shelter-in-place.
It’s a two-fer.
You encapsulate the yucky stuff, and you get a 12" thick concrete slab foundation for, I don’t know, an Ikea and a Starbucks and a parking garage. You know, something really useful.
Probably because a good part of the pollution happened before there was a law? It’s an old principle of American justice that you don’t go after people who “broke the law” before there was one.