Justice Department and EPA File Complaint Against Norfolk Southern for Unlawful Discharge of Pollutants and Hazardous Substances in East Palestine Derailment
Regarding the first link posted above, I think this sentence is interesting:
“To prevent an explosion, Norfolk Southern vented and burned five rail cars containing vinyl chloride in a flare trench the following day, resulting in additional releases.”
There has been other discussion and controversy on-line about the question who formulated and executed the decision to do the controlled burn. Notice it says that NS did this. I have yet to see any references indicating whether or not the regulators approved of the vent/burn treatment of the five tank cars of vinyl chloride, either before it was done, or after it was done.
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Also: This video reveals that the failed wheel bearing had been re-manufactured in 2011. I would think that since there is so much at stake with railcar bearings, they would be manufactured according to all the testing and documentation needed to predict their performance. I have no idea what extent this is being done, but it should leave no questions as to quality issues of metallurgy, machining, finishing, or tolerances.
And, one must ask “what advantage does a remanufactured component usually offer, that a completely new unit does not?” $$$ [}:)]
From Railway Age:
Source:
https://www.railwayage.com/mechanical/freight-cars/laboratory-testing-of-reconditioned-bearings/
You people are ignoring what is likely the most important factor in these ‘remanufactured’ bearings – their material and quality make them “500,000” mile or better MTBF… but even multiwear wheels last only a fraction of that, and the bearing components must usually be disassembled to replace the wheels on the axles.
So save the Earl Scheib quality and Asian schadenfreude cracks until we have demonstrated proof of such practices in the industry – not sayin, after the loose-wheels-on-new-cars fiasco, that there aren’t.
I would think that the market for reman bearings and axles would nominally be for equipment that IS NOT going to be used in Interchange service. ie. short lines and historic operations on equipment that WILL NOT be going off line.
Such carriers can be willing to ‘roll the dice’ on such reman components knowing that they will not be subject to either high speed or high mileage uses.
Some people are acrobatic in trying to paint the cause of this accident as the railroads being cheap.
Do you actually know what is involved in either the fabrication or reconstruction of an AP bearing? These are parts that pass at least equal NDT testing to new manufacture, with hundreds of thousands of miles’ worth of nominal life on them, and are installed with no less care than new components on the axle ends. Where, then, is the perceived ‘unsuitability’ for another wheel’s worth of interchange wear?
Did you think they pulled bearing rollers out of a bucket and stuck them into a grease-filled cage putting a bearing back together?
In my perusal of the various NTSB reports that have been published, there is repeated reference to the hot bearing on the 23rd car in the train, however, I have not been able to ascertain the car initial and number of the 23rd car. Without knowing the ownership of the car, making any assertions to ‘cheap’ are way out of line.
So, are there any “Pic-a-Part” type outfits catering specifically to railroads? [;)]
To be honest, I don’t think he’s talking about ‘cheap bearings’ from private owners (the car in question was described as a covered hopper carrying carbon black of some kind, which almost certainly would have had a private owner) – he’s part of the movement making NS and its safety culture out to be ‘cheap’ or to have standards of easy virtue or whatever. Your point of ‘way out of line’, however, still stands in that context.
I don’t know of any that handle key stressed running-gear components… and I sure do hope there aren’t any! (And I say that as a confirmed and very satisfied perpetual customer on the yard at Pull-A-Part on Farrisview here…)
Where I’m worried stuff will be found in the woodwork is with the equivalent of places that forge, or pretend, to have proper procedures and certification for highly-stressed components that supposedly have anticipated service life well beyond expectations in service. I suspect that it is difficult to eyeball, say, a roller, and be able to determine whether it is developing internal stress raisers or inclusions leading to face spalling… 150,000 miles of rolling after being re-included in a bearing structure.
What is still ‘yet to be determined’ is whether lenient track-geometry or flat-wheel standards are leading these components to develop cumulative damage faster, even though they were suitable-for-purpose when installed. The 1998 catastrophic-damage-in-10-miles spalling was both massive and pre-existing when the test bearing was made up. But that level of damage, if developed suddenly in a working bearing, would have the additional damage of the debris in addition to the tribology faillure contributing…
This is why I look at the possibility of a single roller essentially disintegrating as a possibility. The pieces of that one roller could cause massive destruction of the rest of the bearing.
Note in my linked source that rebuilt bearings are actually quite common - to the extent that most of the cars on the railroad may well have remanufactured bearings, railroad owned and privately owned.
I’m pretty sure that there is a mechanism in place for whatever railroad a car happens to be on to be reimbursed for necessary repairs. Thus the car in question might have been repaired by, say, UP, from their stock of wheels if the car had a condemnable flat wheel.
My guess is that the incident commander (often the fire chief) with input from environmental engineers and the RR, would have approved it as the best alternative. This was done to mitigate an explosive situation. The point is that it was still NS’s accident/spill.
Yes, I’ve had considerable good fortune at the self-serve salvage yards as well. But there is ONLY one reason I use such places.
Same logic would apply to “factory reconditioned” warez, as well. [A]
One would think that with all the emphasis we’ve heard about efforts to remove rolling stock from inventory the past decade or so, that there would be a considerable stockpile of used bearings awaiting reconditioning?
About 1/2 way down on the below link you will find an overhead drone picture with every car involved in the incident.
The challenges of East Palestine’s toxic waste cleanup : NPR
The overhead only begins at car 26.
When I said I was surprised to learn that the bearings were routinely rebuilt, I did not mean to suggest that they are of such low quality that they were not worth rebuilding. I meant just the opposite; that is that they are such high quality that they are not worth rebuilding.
Because the stakes of bearing failures are so high, they are built to ultra-high quality. Then since nearly every part of the bearing in service is routinely worked to the limit, I would expect every part to be working toward metal fatigue. So it would seem necessary for a proper rebuild to replace nearly every part.
Also because of the high quality, the assembly is subject to a large number of close tolerances that would be automatically controlled in the new manufacturing, but would likely have to be manually performed in a rebuild. Such manual tolerance inspection is technically demanding and time consuming. So it would seem that the assembly inspection for tolerances and fits would have to be done with the same automatic equipment that is used in manufacturing new bearings. I suspect that would require all new inspection equipment made to accommodate the manual assembly process.
So, given all of that, I am surprised that it is apparently cost effective to rebuild the bearings.
I posted some information about this on the other “derailments” thread. As I recall, it involved positions on the question of who approved the controlled burn. So the following parties were asked whether they approved the controlled burn: The Ohio and Pennsylvania Governors, Norfolk Southern RR, the Federal and Ohio EPAs, the East Palestine Fire Chief Incident Commander, and the local Police Department. There was a public hearing that addressed this matter; and all the above-mentioned denied having given the approval for the controlled burn.
I am most curious about what the Federal EPA would have recommended had they been asked for an approval of the controlled burn. I would like to know what the EPA considers to have been the
The ONLY real issue that makes East Palestine other than most other ‘serious’ derailments is the implementation of the botched “controlled release”. (I will address the main-line remediation, which to me is a completely different issue and concern, later.)
There are to me very clear, and ongoing, attempts at a ‘narrative’ that pins the environmental vinyl-chloride catastrophe on NS. To the extent – and it may be considerable – that this interferes in genuine fact finding and assessment of responsibility for controlled demolition of all five cars simultaneously (which, we must not forget, was carefully described in detail many hours before it was implemented), such a narrative in and of itself is reprehensible and should be viewed and treated for what it is.
That is not at all to ‘spin around’ that the actual people involved in directing and conducting the burn should be held morally and financially responsible for the problems it has caused, and this should not be ‘excused away’ simply by using deep-pockets litigation (which will almost certainly be how the costs wind up being paid).
It remains to be seen what the nature of attempts at containment of the vinyl chloride were – I remember seeing news reports that ‘containment’ efforts, probably including berming, barriers and drainage to catch basins, but again, this is something a fair report will include and discuss. To some extent this would preclude released chemicals from inclusion in the grade and subgrade, but I personally doubt that it would prevent effective contamination to levels that would, in fact, require subsequent mass excavation and abatement (probably via portable pyrolysis on that scale…
BUT at a time and on a schedule that would permit NS to construct the required shooflies, bypasses, shoring, rerouting, etc. to keep at least critical traffic moving in the ‘lanes’ served by that line. To me, there is no con