This has occurred in just the last hour so few details are known. http://www.valleynewslive.com/story/24329396/train-derailment-west-of-casselton
Flyover country. If it weren’t for the movie, most people would have never heard of Fargo.
Unless the enviro or anti-DOT111 folks go after it, this won’t last one news cycle, other than locally and in the rail press.
Please, keep us updated!
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/30/us-northdakota-collision-idUSBRE9BT0OV20131230 Couldn’t get it to link.
Two trains were involved. There was a derailment and then another train ran into it, possibly on an adjacent track. Casselton was the place, but it was out of town and so there were no city injuries.
It is out of the radio news cycle already.
ROAR
Newswire with more details.
jclass article activated: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/30/us-northdakota-collision-idUSBRE9BT0OV20131230
Local info and photos …
WHAT is going on? I didn’t think crude oil would go up like that.
Looked like a mini-Hiroshima.
I trust the railroads…its their business, their property, their people. Its the oil companies I don’t trust.
Reports of head end locomotives being involved in fireball-I think that is the DPU in the pics-any word on the crews? They seem to be ignored in news reports! Hope they are okay!
Anybody remember Aliceville, Alabama? Middle of nowhere, no one was hurt, just a mess to cleanup. Or the thread. http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/222070.aspx?sort=ASC&pi332=1 Rgds IGN
According to Business Insider, no injuries to crew or anyone else has been reported. Good news if it stays that way.
Contrast the above with this quote from the Yahoo article:
“The Association of American Railroads recently proposed costly fixes to older tank cars that do not meet its latest standards but continue to carry hazardous fuels such as oil.”
Last anyone heard, the AAR is neither an “enviro” group nor an “anti-DOT111” group"
Video of the fire and smoke made the NBC “Nightly news” on the west coast.
Grinnell
As Narig pointed out about Aliceville, and someone else mentioned about other coverage (or lack thereof), unless someone (the enviros or the anti-DOT111 folks, f’rinstance) uses this as a rallying point, it’ll be out of the news within a day or so.
The reference to AAR in the story merely points out that they have taken issue with the cars - which we knew. It’s background information, and we should be glad that someone did some research for their story.
Except for local coverage (which will continue for the duration), this will be a non-story for most of the nation before the ball drops in Times Square.
And why should you be glad of that? Do you think the AAR is anti DOT-111 tankcars? They certainly regard their use for hauling certain flammables (such as the bakken crude) as dangerous unless modified.
KSTP 5 in the Twin Cities reported one engineer has 2nd degree burns. Here in the Twin Cities we had a near 50 degree temp drop from Saturday afternoon to Sunday late morning. Fargo gets a bit colder than we do. One northern Mn town recorded a -40f temp last night not including wind chill. I’d suspect a broken rail from the extreme cold.
Lac Megantic
Aliceville
Casselton
…
A clear pattern has emerged:
Consider the words of a respected analyst, shedding light on a notable techn-managerial failure:
Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident Volume 2:
Appendix F - Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle
by R. P. Feynman
Conclusions
If a reasonable launch schedule is to be maintained, engineering often cannot be done fast enough to keep up with the expectations of originally conservative certification criteria designed to guarantee a very safe vehicle. In these situations, subtly, and often with apparently logical arguments, the criteria are altered so that flights may still be certified in time. They therefore fly in a relatively unsafe condition, with a chance of failure of the order of a percent (it is difficult to be more accurate).
Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers.
In any event this has had very unfortunate consequences, the most serious of which is to encourage ordinary citizens to fly in such a dangerous machine, as if it had attained the safety of an ordinary airliner. The astronauts, like test pilots, should know their risks, and we honor them for their courage. Who can doubt that McAuliffe was equally a person of great courage, who was closer to an awareness of the true risk than NASA management would have us believe?
[F5] Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to
Whatever else you think about oil on the rails, you gotta admit it makes for one heck of a fireball!
Tree68 is whistling in the wind if he thinks the anti-fossil fuel crowd won’t be all over this one. It’s better than even the horrific Lac Megantic, because it happened at home. They jump up and down when a pipeline in N.D. leaks a few hundred gallons; what do you think they’ll do with Casselton?
One non-hysterical way to look at the big-headline oil-by-rail accidents we have seen so far:
Lac Megantic was apparently caused by an inexcusably careless and stupid operating practice: leaving a potential bomb parked unattended, on a grade, with live locomotives. Presumably, the practice outlawed, this kind of accident won’t happen again.
Casselton happened because of a mechanical failure about which – Washington take note – Positive Train Control would have done nothing. Mechanical failure is a transportation fact of life with which we will have to live – in the air, on water, highway and rail – even after all operation has been automated.
We have said that tank cars will be made more secure – not perfectly secure – in the future. The question will be whether we are grownup enough to live with another of life’s many remote hazards in the meantime.