All Oiled Up article in March Trains says you can ship railbit in an heated insulated tank car or raw bitumen at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Does it have to be kept heated as it travels? I am guessing that it only has to be heated when it’s loaded and again when unloaded. Am I right on this?
Even if it’s not kept heated on its way, it’s still going to stay hot in an insulated car for some time, especially starting at 200 F. Has anybody thought about what happens in an accident when a car full of hot oil splits open?
It behaves exactly like you think it would, it flows along the ground. This method has been used for years to ship Molten Sulfur. I can remember working on a derailment cleaning up broken tankcars that were carrying Molten Sulfur. The product that had flowed out onto the ground was scooped up. But the solidified Sulfur remaining in the car looked like a big “O” once we cut the car in half. We rigged a couple of ties on the end of the dangling cable from a crane and used it as a battering ram to beat on the tankcar shell to loosen the Sulfur from the shell and then shoveled it out. The cars will have to be put on steam for a number of hours before you will be able to unload them. But a refinery produces a lot of steam for its various processes, so that won’t be an issue. And no the cars are not on a source of heat in transit.