Join the discussion on the following article:
Trains News Wire FLASH UPDATE: Lynchburg downtown evacuated for crude oil fire
We did not need this. Not again.
When I worked for PC and Conrail, the rules for handling placarded dangerous cars were something like a minimum of 6 cars from the head end, 6 cars from the rear end and no more than 6 dangerous in a row. We had a chlorine plant locally and the stuff was handled safely.
Now there are entire UNIT trains of dangerous cars.
In the early 80s CR moved several unit trains per week of bunker oil (highly viscous fuel oil, not the gasoline-like Bakken crude) from the port of Albany to an Oswego, NY power plant. I do not believe there ever was a derailment and certainly never any catastrophic derailment.
I believe that handling oil in such a manner is inherently dangerous and the railroads have certainly compromised safety by cutting crew size and maintenance. The years of haggling over the DOT-111 cars by the AAR is a case in point – they have known they had problems for years and it was not until Le Megantic that they got serious about fixing the problem. How many thousands of defective DOT-111 cars were produced between 2008 and July 2013?
Everything is done to maximize the quarterly profit and public safety be damned.