Posted on 03/08/2015 1:27:15 PM PDT by thackney
A tank car full of crude weighs in at about 260,000 to 275,000 pounds. Not only do the cars have to be safe, but the rails, bridges, etc., have to be up to snuff. There’s a railyard near me, and I’ve looked down the tracks. They bend all over the place! Like the tracks of two snakes in the snow. No wonder the trains just creep into the yard! I know it takes a pretty fair distance to slow/stop a train, but these tracks are totally screwy!
Yes, seems to be a larger than normal number of train accidents lately.
Fortunately, NO CO2 was produced by the event in this picture. (ALGORE will be so proud!)
Nevermind all that oil in the river nonsense....we don’t need no foul pipelines.....signed/Barack
Derailment of grain, lumber, and other assorted goods happen all the time too. They just do not make national or international news because they don’t go boom and “catch fire”.
What is even worse is when some highly volatile chemical tanker carrying something like chlorine hydroxide derails and ruptures.
Accidents happen.
“...trains derail carrying grain...”
“...amazed at how often that happens...”
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First you have to define “what is a derail?”
My company defines it as any time a wheel leaves the track.
There does not have to be a spectacular event.
There does not have to be a railcar on it’s side.
We have safety devices in-place that intentionally derail cars.
My experience is that most “derails” happen at low speed
on non federally regulated industrial track “inside the fence-lines”
of various plants and factories and warehouses.
These events are neither sensational nor newsworthy.
They are just a royal pain in the ass.
My rough guess from my own experience is that
80% are related to issues with track infrastructure;
10% are related to faulty operations and procedures; and
10% are related to issues with railcar maintenance.
These events are neither sensational nor newsworthy.
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That has been my understanding as well.
I remember a derailment about ten years back where about twenty cars went off an overpass and tumbled to the valley about a hundred feet below. I had sold the lumber on one of the cars involved. It had come from one of West Fraser’s sawmill in BC. It was going to a lumber dealer in Chicago. The derailment happened outside of Duluth, MN. It made the national news because it was such a spectacular crash. They had to build about a mile of roadway to get the salvage equipment to the site. We had a picture of the wreck that had been taken by a helicopter up on the wall of our office for years. We also sent a framed copy of it to the customers involved. The mill reshipped a new car to the customer promptly. Eventually, the insurance company salvaged the material and put it out for bid to be sold “as is, no claims”.
that is egg-sack-lee right.
(see 45)
It’s a big difference if it happens on 5 mph track or 60 mph track.
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Youngstown, Florida train derailment Feb. 26, 1978:
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http://www.newsherald.com/news/out-of-the-past-youngstown-train-derailment-happened-35-years-ago-1.101078
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http://jayssouth.com/florida/youngstown/
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http://floridahistorian5.blogspot.com/2008/06/deadly-mystery-youngstown-train.html
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Blood on the rails...
Canada Ping!
I interviewed for a job several years ago with a company that operated several short-track rail lines. One of the job responsibilities was flying out and photographing any accidents / incidents that might have occurred. Sadly, I didn't get the job, so my knowledge of trains remains pretty limited.
It seems like the rail cars derail more frequently than the locomotives on a per train basis. The locomotives in Lac Magantic rolled just fine through town while the oil cars didn’t. Id guess that the CoG of the locos is lower than that of the loaded tank cars. Perhaps the tank cars need a total redesign with a loaded CoG as low as that of the locomotives as the objective.
There has been ANOTHER crude carrying train derailment?
How many is that THIS year... three?
How many pipeline spills of the same magnitude in the same time?
I know, it doesn’t matter. I’m being logical. Stupid me.
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