Both Don Phillips and Fred Frailey wrote pieces in the May/15 issue of Trains magazine that address public perceptions of risks associated with transport of crude oil by rail.
Frailey, IMO, hit a home run. Rather than re-spouting the common place “if the NIMBYS don’t want their houses blown up, why did they buy next to the RR in the first place?” type defensive rants, I thought his suggestion to place more defect detectors and increase the frequency of track inspections along crude corridors to be a welcome guide post towards taking responsibility rather than the all-too-common tendancy of shrugging the responsibility off and finger pointing
FRA requires that a train must pass a Defect Detector at least every 50 miles. Knowing that electronic equipment in the railroad enviornment will fail from time to time, my carrier initially installed their defect detctors about every 25 miles, so one could be taken out of service and still be ‘FRA Legal’ by passing a DD at least every 50 miles. Over the past several years my carrier has under taken a project to space the DD’s every 10 to 15 miles on the high volume segments of the property.
FRA rail inspection vehicles traverse our high volume track segments yearly or more frequently and in addition company rail inspection vehicles are scheduled over the high volume track segments at least twice yearly, if not more frequently. Third Party outside vendors track inspection vehicles traverse the high volume track yearly if not more frequently. Part of divisional managements performance measurement system is dependent upon the track time that is made available to all the forms of track inspection vehicles - FRA, Vendor and Company Owned.
I have not read it. Did Don Phillips make a defensive anti-NIMBY rant? That seems like the last thing that would save the day with oil train issues. It denies the problem by believing that it is being caused by only by NIMBYS and the media. I think it actually misses the point to think the opposition is NIMBYS.
Didn’t Fred pretty much destroy his credibility with his instance that there was a mega merger in the works in spite of all the facts and logical arguments to the contrary? Read Jim McClellan’s interview in the May issue of Trains for the view from someone “been there done that”!
No, Don did not. If the way I worded my post gave you that impression, then I’m sorry, didn’t mean to finger him. The anti-nimby rants that I identified as common place tend to originate from a few regular members here who’s contributions tend toward the “heavy fisted” style of composition.
Sorry for the confusion. I used the term “defensive anti-Nimby rants” referring to the same ham-fisted posters who Convicted One mentioned in contrast to BaltACD’s useful, educational post.
Another thing I found interesting in Frailey’s article, was how one of the head honchos of one of the Canadian carriers was “requesting” that the railroads be given permission to refuse shipments they feel are unsafe.
I am shocked because never would I have expected that the railroads are “required” to accept lading they feel to be unsafe.
So, If I ship an open Gaylord full of acetone peroxide, the railroad is obligated to accept shipment?
EHH was simply repeating something UP tried about a decade ago in relation to transporting some type of hazardous material. They ended up losing in court not too many years ago. It should be in the Newswire section. And no, you do have to put a on a lid and other resonable protections before you can ship whatever that was. Hence the debate about DOT 111 cars.
FF did get on thing right that I have believed since this whole CBR mess came up, the RR’s have to hire more carmen and section men or whatever thier new job names are these days. If the RR’s don’t get a grip on this issue soon someone is going to force them to implement manned rollby inspection once per hour.
They won’t be Station Agents, because it would be done by men in trucks leapfrogging the trains, but it is going to cost them a bunch.
I think this acceptance of shipped goods is decided ahead of time by the regulators and the input from railroads that determines what must be carried and under what conditions. I assume there are many things that railroads are prohibited from carrying. Apparently it is okay to ship Bakken oil the way they are doing it. And yet these regulations can change with the times. So there are calls for changing the requirements for accepting oil traffic in reaction to this explosion hazard that nobody seemed to see coming.
It is an interesting proposition because there is no reason why an option to refuse oil shipments cannot be granted by the government. The government could just as easily ban oil by rail shipping. So if public
Manned inspection doesn’t add anything to the safety equation except expense.
My carriers rules require a car that has been stopped by a Defect Detector 2 times to be set out - even though the man inspecting the car cannot find the defect that caused the activation. Cars then have the offending wheel set(s) changed out by the car department.
Today’s defect detectors have a much better ‘visual acuity’ for the def
As Balt said, “If you ship a allowed commodity in an approved shipping container, the carriers cannot refuse it.” However, if you misidentify your shipment on the bill of lading, you are responsible for any damage ocurring as a result of your misidentification. I would say that very few, if any, carriers have any way to verify that you have the correct identification.
Also, (at least this was so when I was involved in hazardous shipments) you may not ship anything classified as an inhalation hazard by air; the regulations forbid such shipment. (Not precisely pertinent to the topic, perhaps, but a statement that certain things may not be shipped in all manners.)
So any given car in a mainline freight train will pass a Defect Detector* from roughly twice per hour to about 2 hour intervals, depending on their spacing, the train’s speed, etc.
(*Defect Detectors vary greatly in their capability, from mere hotbox and dragging equipment, to Wheel Impact Load Detectors [“WILD”], misaligned wheel, “hunting” trucks, cracker or missing wheel sections, etc.)
But the track gets a “high-tech” (more than visual**) inspection maybe only 5 to 10 times a year or so, depending on the scheduling of the sort outlined by BaltACD above.
The number of oil trains has been growing fast. Everybody can see that growth spurt. At the same time, a problem with exploding derailments pops up. And then that problem starts to grow right along with the growth of oil traffic. Everybody can see that too. With both trends growing together, it is easy to see the possibility of a very deadly oil train wreck in our future. Thanks to Lac Megantic, everybody knows what a bad oil train wreck is.
So the oil train wreck proposition has an ominous quality that hangs over all of our heads. I think this message is growing precarious.
I thought I have seen photographs of long tank car trains during WWII. As I gather, these were largely trainloads of gasoline. How did they manage to control that? Was there a safety factor in those old 1940’s tank cars that does not exist in the new tank cars of today?
Given the censorship of the time, finding information on such incidents that did occur would likely be a daunting task. An incident that occurred outside populated areas might not have been reported to the public at all.
During WWII, I imagine that there were a greater frequency of oil train accidents. However, the public had bigger problems to think about, found shipping it by rail neccesary to get any gasoline at all during rationing, and weren’t trying to get the nation to stop using oil. Explosions, if not censored by the press due to sabatoge fears, were probably viewed as collateral damage in the war effort where oil was neccesary. The media also had bigger things to report, and train accidents were unfortunately way more common.
I think this acceptance of shipped goods is decided ahead of time by the regulators and the input from railroads that determines what must be carried and under what conditions. I assume there are many things that railroads are prohibited from carrying. Apparently it is okay to ship Bakken oil the way they are doing it. And yet these regulations can change with the times. So there are calls for changing the requirements for accepting oil traffic in reaction to this explosion hazard that nobody seemed to see coming.
It is an interesting proposition because there is no reason why an option to refuse oil shipments cannot be granted by the government. The government could just as easily ban oil by rail shipping. So if public safety is the goal, this government must listen to its constituents and take some type of action. This puts government in the driver’s seat.
They can stop Bakken oil by rail simply by delaying the new tank car rules, and all the while threatening to make them more stringent. Who wants to build a new tank car if it can be outlawed the next day?
It would be interesting if the government simply gave the industry the option to stay out of the oil by rail business. I’ll bet that would put the number crunchers to work. It would be i
I’ve seen such photos, too. They were not immune to derailments or collisions - there’s a photo of one in The Nickel Plate Story (John A. Rehor, Kalmbach Publishing, circa 1965). There’s also a photo of such a train safely on the rails in daylight, if I recall correctly.
The tank cars of that day were a lot smaller than those of today - about half the capacity, hence ‘stiffer’ in a structural sense, and I’m sure that the steel of the tanks was thicker than today. The trains also were likely not a long as they are today.
On the other hand, there were steam locomotives with their fireboxes all over the place, friction bearings to cause hotboxes, jointed rail, etc.
And the attitude back then - as noted above - was summarized in the saying: “Don’t you know there’s a war on ?”
This wuold make a darn good topic for a history paper, to compare and contrast with today. If I was back in a college environment . . . Maybe Mike (wanswheel) can help us out on this.