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First off, the cities and towns were built around the railroads. They were built there to take advantage of the huge variety of goods that travel by rail, including, but not by any means limited to Anhydrous Ammonia, Styrene, gasoline, fuel oil, hydrochloric acid, hydroflouric acid, sulfuric acid, and a wide variety of other substances it just isn't a good idea to bathe in.

Some of them burn, others release vapors which are caustic or deadly, still others require contact. Some can even interact spectacularly.

So is the cargo the problem?

Well, there is one heck of a lot of oil transported in this country daily by rail. We have probably heard about every accident involving a fire, much like spectacular car crashes.

We don't hear much about the boxcar load of toilet paper that rolls over, or the tank car full of milk, so, I'm guessing there is an if it bleeds it leads, but if it burns it gets first place sort of phenomenon going on here.

Let's look at the wrecks. Lac Megantic, where a few dozen people did get killed: cause was an unattended train on a grade had a fire in the engine which was left idling to maintain brake pressure. THat engine was shut down and the pressure in the brake system bled down, and the train freewheeled down grade some distance into town with catastrophic results.

Procedural failure.

Casselton ND: oil hauling train struck derailed grain cars and in turn derailed, with fire.

Failure to stop the train before encountering blocked tracks.

PA: derailment.

Virginia: derailment.

West Virginia: derailment.

I think I'm seeing a pattern, here.

If the trains stay on the tracks, they seem to get where they are going safely (The one in Lac Megantic derailed, too).

If not, there may be a problem.

Maybe the problem isn't the cargo, or the trains, so much as the tracks they are running on.

When you consider all the potentially hazardous and even combustible products which move by rail, it's funny that we seldom hear of any of the other products being involved in a train wreck. Either the amount of oil being transported is orders of magnitude greater so it is more often involved in train wrecks (a possibility), certain areas have bad tracks but we aren't hearing about the other wrecks, or maybe someone is targeting oil trains.

After all, oil is an industry which has been in the administration's cross hairs from day one.