Railroad right of ways are often way wider then the space that they use. Why fight the trend seems that I remember that UP and CN had a energy divsion and was in the pipeline and gas buisness at one time
(1) Railroads do not like losing control of their assets, especially railroad corridors. Parallel pipelines are a bozo-no-no, especially regulated hazmat carrier pipelines. When pipeline/ underground utility work starts dictating when the operating department can run trains, senior management goes ballistic/ nuclear.
(2) Many lessons were learned with fiber optic cables 15-20 years ago. NEVER again. Santa Fe shut down more than a few cable ops for reckless or dangerous acts. I suspect others did as well. Railplow ops almost don’t happen anywhere anymore.
(3) Railroads require casing within 25’ / Pipeliners abhor it. (cathodic protection issues)…Amusing to watch pipeliners fight to keep other utilities/pipelines out of existing pipeline corridors and also what happens when too many pipelines try to parallel a rail line at the receiving end.
(4) State regulations in Indiana, Iowa, Colorado and some other places are about to create some nightmare lawsuits and scenarios. Major Class Action case involving two Class One’s is getting started. In Colorado it is principally high tension power lines, but…
(5) Why do the railroads have to surrender their buffer zones to people who are too cheap to clear their own R/W, are in too much in a hurry to build instead of plan their work, still have a reputation of being careless/ reckless??? (but have finally seen the “light” even though the fly by night stuff still happens.)…Frequent problem with pipeline people has been the build it first and ask for forgiveness later attitude -or- asking for permission AFTER construction has begun and pipe is being laid within sight of the railroad. Plenty of Ag owners don’t want pipeline under them either.
The further east you go, the narrower the R/W’ s get and there are plenty of places where a rail line and a pipeline would simply not coexist. (Then again, I can think of places on the west coast where railroad main track R/W’s are only 17-25 feet
It is amazing the amount of damage to the ground and under the surface level that at major derailment can cause. 1989 is a case in point.
Balt: I was there for the derailment, not the weeks later explosion caused by the nicked steel CalNev pipe. Will never forget the discolored bright blue & orange wheelsets from the locomotive traction motors or the dispatchers sending us to find the derailment on the other guy’s railroad to make sure it didn’t bite us.
Conversely, I have seen the mess, up close when a pipeline fails on more than one location, usually water (thankfully, usually an old pre-1958 crossing w/o casing or a bootlegged installation). Reclamation usually is a PITA and if it shuts down the railroad while remediation takes place, the operations people sport fangs, claws and daggers.
What is the process when a railroad runs east-west, and the Acme Pipeline Company wants to run a pipeline north-south crossing the active railroad line? Does Acme just drop a line on a postcard asking permission?
MC ++++ Posters need to listen to him. Could write a book on some of the problems he mentioned.
SEVERLY more involved than a postcard.
Acme, if they are smart, goes on line and downloads the railroad’s pipeline standards; Follows those instructions to the letter; submits their form & checklist, pays the insurance and gets approval 45-60 days later. Unfortunately, the 6-P’s get violated and nothing starts until the construction crews are at the R/W fence. Railroad wants to know:
Where? (in railroad terms, no crayon on back of a napkin crap) angle of crossing and footprint…Railroad gets to set rent based on size of footprint and local real estate railroad tax values.
How deep ? (below base or top of rail) - Better be more than 6 feet.
What size? what wall thickness? Type of material Pipe is made of?
Material in pipe being moved?
Pressure?
Casing (size /thickness/depth)? Difference in size between carrier pipe and casing)?
Installation Method and who installs? (installer has safety training and insurance?)
When?
Who is responsible party? (You will never get an easement, so the responsible party has to be accountable and known to the railroad in contract license language. Railroads dearly want to mitigate the risk.)
Nearest manholes and valves to railroad?
Pull up BNSF’s Utility Accomodation Policy if you want to see a good, representative example.
http://www.bnsf.com/communities/faqs/pdf/utility.pdf
To paraphrase an old Murphy’s Law Postulate: An automatic emergency panic on the pipelines part does NOT require an automatic forced response by the railroad. Chicken Little gets put in timeout.
SEVERE? - Yes! (for darned good reason)
I’ve seen pictures of pipeline bridges solely for the purpose of crossing the ROW, but I can’t find one now. The pipe started underground, came out and over the bridge, and returned underground.
Usually in solid rock areas or permafrost conditions. Boring machines, HDD, drilling units, augers, pipe rammers et al jump and start bucking when they hit rock.
UGH: Rocks on a jack & bore. having to hire a casing diver to dig it out., They get big bucks.
No re bore on some water lines and almost never on sewer lines.
6-P’s? A 50’s do-wop sextet?
“+1” to what mudchicken wrote above, generally. If you’ve seen the movie “Gas Land”, you know what the oil and gas company’s “land men” are capable of.
This can be a very big obstacle, especially here in the east where the railroad R/W was assembled from many different landowners (may change every couple hundred feet) at various times (from a few years to decades apart), and with many different terms and conditions (too complicated to explain here - see law school course on property rights and modern land transactions).
In layman’s terms, permission may have been granted back in the mid-1800’s to build a railroad and its accessories - only - across the land, not pipelines, electric, telephone, fiber optic, etc. (none invented yet then anyway, so it would have been hard to grant permission for them anyhow). Similar limitations and concerns pertain elsewhere, often under slightly different local names, customs, and details, etc.
A few years back a merchant electric generating company wanted to use a an ex-Reading RR branch line R/W to move its cooling water from the Bethlehem, PA area (sewage treatment plant, actually) to its site about 15 miles southwest. What killed the deal was the fact that many of the easements that comprised the R/W were expressly limited to railroad use only, and even by just allowing the pipeline to use it anyway would subject the railroad to the risk of a lawsuit and loss of the railroad’s easement as well under the doctrine of over-use or abuse of the easement. So even if the railroad wanted to cooperate - and there a
@MC - What was this incident you speak of? I wasn’t a rail fan back then and am interested to learn more about RR operations - ie what happened? why would dispatcher route you onto another railroad?, etc.
A friend of mine was working for NCTD when MCI was putting in fiber optic cables. He made comments to the effct of “railroad safety” and MCI should never be used in the same sentence.
Speaking of cathodic protection: RR electrification will present some interesting challenges, though AC electrification presents a small fraction of the electrolytic corrosion problem as does DC - running a pipeline parallel to the Milw’s electrified zone would have been fun.
- Erik
Pipeline on the railroad’s right of way sounds like a great idea. Instead of just oil trains being potentail hazards, every train is a potential hazard even if it is carrying water. One train derailing and going through that line, and you have a big problem on your hands. Now imagine a oil train or coal train going through the pipeline. That is going to burn for hours, and cause huge problems.
If the pipeline has the possibility of taking just even some portion of the traffic the railroad could carry, why should the railroad give up a chance at that business ? Except for a handsome fee / profit, of course.
Otherwise, why should the railroad care at all ? No prizes for being “Mr. Nice Guy” in those businesses (unless the pipeline is affiliated with a major shipper elsewhere, in which case different considerations apply). The railroad stands to gain no benefit at all, other than maybe just a fee - and the risk of a lot of headaches, entirely unrelated to the core business except to disrupt it. Not worth the bother for a Class 1 these days. For a regional or shortline, though, it could be “cash cow” - again, different scenario, different outcome.
- Paul North.
Proper Planning Prevents **P__**s Poor Performance[:-^][:-^][:-^]
RRs have the ROW so it should bwe easy to get into the pipeline buisness
Troll alert!!
Looks like Ohio River Trail, aka railtrail, is flooding the forum, taking advantage of the software problems.