I live in the DeForest,Wis. area.CP goes past my home with lots of tank cars.Some have PROX numbers while some others have GTX numbers.This particular line is the former Milwaukee Road going from Portage,wis. to Madison,Wis. I am curious since these cars have the hazardous materials sign on them.Are they carrying bio-fuels or nuclear waste or what? Some days there can be as many as 20 tank cars behind the locomtives.
You’re on the CP main line. GATX and PROX cars are very common there, and there are so many possibilities. If you can get some specific numbers off them, we might be able to give you some possibilities as to what’s inside. Also, toward the right end of the side, the commodity might be stencilled on the car itself.
If you get a chance, get the placard number off the hazardous placard (if you can’t get the number, even the color will help!).
You can actually look up the four digit “UN” numbers you’ll find either on the diamond shaped placard, or as black numbers on an orange background.
The reference is here. It’s a handy resource to have. It’s a PDF file. It’s not all that big, so you can easily download it to your computer.
If you’ve got lots of paper and ink/toner, you could print it off so you can carry it around. Or you can check with your local fire department to see if they’ve got an older version laying around that they’ll let you have. While there are changes edition-to-edition, they aren’t usually significant from the layman’s point of view.
DeForest is on the M&P Subdivision between Madison and Portage, south of the mainline. There are lots of possibilities for what’s in those tank cars. Top of my list without knowing what style and size the tankcars are would be LP Gas, and then Anhydrous Ammonia.
John, thanks for the correction on the line. If you’re correct, it should be an easy choice: red placards for LPG, and green placards for anhydrous ammonia. As you probably know, both are shipped in cars of about the same size, approximately 33,500 gallons.
Even if there are no placards there should be, or usually is, stenceling on the right side saying what is the commodity being handled…usually tank cars are single commodity because of the different appliances and valves needed for specific materials.
With the emphasis on Homeland Security the stenciling is going away and product labels are strictly UN coded now, hazmat is getting considerable coverage to ‘Protect the public’ or so they think. Fire departments are having to school up on UN codes and hazmat accident listings.
When is this change supposed to happen? 49 CFR 172.330 still requires the name of certain chemicals to be put on the tankcar.