In California, we are quite concerned about the increasing number of proposed oil trains of up to and exceeding 100 units in each train. I have noticed in the Rochelle, IL webcam that a freight car accompanies each train. What is its purpose?
Are you referring to the buffer cars (one just ahead of the tank cars and one behind the last the tank car)? These provide a buffer between the hazmat carrying cars and the engine(s); they are required by law. Incidentally, the oil carried in the tank cars is also freight.
A buffer car seems logical, but it is also logical that within the car could be equipment unique to fighting an accidental derailment.
Very unlikely.
The FRA mandates the buffer car and that is what you are seeing.
The railroads generally rely on outside contractors to deal with environmental cleanups.
I don’t believe California is over-reacting to a perceived threat, but in the light of events, residents are demanding more accountability from the railroads, namely Union Pacific and BNSF to not only make schedules public but the resources to fight any accidental occurence.
Public schedules will be opposed by the railroads and most states, since that is percieved as a security risk and serves no real public good.
Would you care to cite sources and post links to these demands and concerns?
Schedules are numbers on paper that may or may not mean anything at anytime. Just ask the passengers on the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited these days. Just like the schedule for the gasoline tankers that frequent I-5, I-10 and the rest of the urban interstates.
I assume that you are referring to a call from town officials and first responders for railroads to notify them when oil or other hazmat will travel through their towns. As I recall, that has generally been implemented in the wake of the oil train controversy, but I don’t know the details. And along with that, there has also been a call for the railroads to provide funding for resources to deal with the increased risk of fire and explosions. I do not know where that stands, but the new Minnesota tax on freight railroads is predicated on funding the added risk such as hiring new inspectors.
It would certainly be possible for railroads to carry firefighting equipment in the consists of oil trains, but that is not what the boxcar buffer car is for. Aside from that is the question of how much benefit would be obtained by carrying firefighting equipment on oil trains. I don’t see much benefit. The equipment might be able to respond quicker, but oil fires go to full involvement almost instantly, so getting there quicker does not help much.
The main way that the industry will respond to the oil train threat is to make tank cars stronger. I think I am the only one who has asked what that will
Will the same be required of trucks on the highway and the airplanes in the sky over California?
Seriously? You don’t understand why the industry wants a stronger car?
What the industry and government did was apply a lot of the design features that were added to the pressurized gas cars 30 years ago. Thicker shells for greater puncture and pressure resistance. Improved head shields for increased puncture resistance. Thermal insulation to increase the time the shell can be exposed to fire before it fails (by a factor of 10). All proven safety features that are very effective.
That is not correct. There is no requirement to notify local authorities.
The requirement is for the railroads to notify states of routes that will be carrying signigficant CBR. there is no requirement for real time notification of train movements. Its just identifying routes.
Amused to no end that the OP thinks that this is a new thing in the great granola bowl. GATX has had tank trains running between Bakersfield and the Long Beach refineries (Union 76/ Unocal(Carson) Texaco(Wilmington) and Mobil(Torrance) since the mid 1980’s…I’d be more worried about pipelines or fuel trucks than tank trains on a per incident basis.
MC, you know that the OP has not been around as long as you and several other posters have.
Our FD does not want to be called for every Hazmat, we simply assume that every train through here is carrying Hazmat cars and train accordingly.
Some years back, the city of Baltimore decided they wanted to know ALL ABOUT any hazmat car traveling through their fair city, and passed an ordinance to that effect.
There ensued a landslide of paper, most of it using abbreviations and terms totally unfamiliar to the city functionaries - hundreds of sheets PER HOUR.
After a rather short time they decided they really didn’t need all that stuff after all.
As for the media-generated panic about oil trains, the probability that any specific Californian might be hurt, or even aware of, an oil train derailment (with or without fire) is probably on the order of 0.01% of the probability of seeing the result of a motor vehicle mishap.
Chuck (retired statistician, former Californian - until I moved to a saner location)
I never said that I don’t understand why the industry wants a stronger car. Of course it is clear why they want a stronger car. A stronger car improves safety, and they want to improve safety.
You speak of the need for greater puncture resistance. All I am asking is what the specific net change will be between existing puncture resistance and “greater puncture r
This is an excellent discussion about a very real challenge. While it is true that hazardous train accident incidents are rare, the Sacramento BEE (October 20, 2014) in their continuing discussion cites UP’s own record of 180 derailments in five years, that may only be disturbing reading until it occurs in your back yard rather than someone else’s. They list five key California rail hazard passes (Dunsmuir, Feather River, Cuesta Grade, Donner Pass and the Tehachapi Mountians) that are garnering the attention of rail inspection, a necessary and welcome step to safety of the rails.
One need only look at the results gained with pressurized gas cars to get an idea of what will be gained by initiating similar improvements on non-pressurized cars.
I’m sure that one could develop some pretty good statistical data on the pressurized cars, before and after, which could then be extrapolated to the non-pressurized cars.
As dehusman points out, the benefits have already been proven.
I think you could develop some good data from other tank car improvements, or just off of the basic modeling of derailment dynamics, train weight and speed, etc. Overall, it would definitely be a complicated calculation to say just how much tank car strength is enough.
For instance, one could consider some hypothetical benchmark, average, and most likely to occur, high speed derailment of oil trains. If it were made up of 111cars, a fire would be almost a 100% certainty.
So the solution has been adopted to make the cars stronger; and specific new material thickness increases are said to accomplish that solution. The actual performance definition of “solution” would be a 0% certainty of a fire upon derailing in this test train derailment scenario.
So the problem is laid out. How far toward zero fire will the new standards take us? This is basically a crash test question.