Railworks America

Wow is right. I wonder what is exploding?
I know crude oil burns, but I didn't think it was all that explosive. It reminds me of a fertilizer or grain elevator explosion.

Ethanol perhaps?

Ericmopar wrote:I know crude oil burns, but I didn't think it was all that explosive.

Yes it is. Ask the people in Lac Megantic.

Interesting quote from that article: "The number of crude oil carloads hauled by U.S. railroads surged from 10,840 in 2009 to a projected 400,000 this year." I seriously hope that safety has also kept pace. Even still accidents will happen. Glad there was no loss of life there.

Wow.! That looks nasty. Im glad it didn't happen inside / downtown.

Amazing! I don't recall ever seeing a fireball last that long and rise that high! I witnessed a gasoline tanker truck burn on I-95 a few years ago, but it was small by comparison.

We are going to see more and more of these types of catastrophes in coming years. The DOT-111 tank car design is woefully inadequate for hauling highly flammable liquids without a major upgrade in safety design. See this article: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?id=9326452. The tanker train run away and explosion that wiped out the center of the Quebec Canada town of Lac-Megantic this summer, killing 47 people, was just such a consist of this tank car design. The tank body is made from a single sheet of steel, easily punctured in a derailment, that allows its contents to empty rapidly onto the ground. Just a single spark with cause it to explode. And there is lots of energy in 34,500 gals of unpressurized volitional petroleum crude or ethanol or gasoline. And in North America we have tens of thousands of these cars riding the rails each day. Ticking Time Bombs. WoW!!!

Of course, transportation wise, the alternate is pumping these chemicals through our very very old and rusted 60-year old plus underground pipeline infrastructure, criss-crossing our country through neighborhood subdivisions, unknown to the residents above them. Ouch!

OlPaint

And of course certain elements won't let us rebuild or build new pipelines which are by their very nature a safer mode of transportation for flammables.

Just say it Buzz: the tree-hugging hippies who have the EPA and the Supreme Chancellor in their pocketbooks, the very same that will deny an entire area an economy over a bird that has already been selected by Nature for extinction or a single minnow fish that was found in an obscure mudhole somewhere. These people are narrow minded and take single disasters such as this as or a minor leak in a backwoods pipeline as their rallying cry while ignoring the fact that millions of other carloads and barrels move safely without incident. Just as bad though are the oil producers and railroads that fight the tank car upgrades in defense of Almighty Profit, although it is obvious they are needed. By the time everyone gets together for an agreement and stops fighting it out in court, the gubment will have killed oil transport by rail, or there won't be any more to transport.

Or we could use less oil.

Chacal wrote:Or we could use less oil.

That makes too much sense, they would never jump for that.

I live about 15 minutes from there. You could see the smoke from my office in north Fargo, it was crazy.

Hey, I AM a tree-hugger! No worries though, that has not dimmed my wits. We all have to co-exist on this planet; we are, in the end, just another animal consuming resources. Hopefully we have enough intelligence to care for the others that need our help.

That oil belongs in a pipeline. It's the safest. Numbers are so fickle... keeping to a 99.997% safe-delivery rate sounds excellent doesn't it? But if you multiply that remaining .003% against that dramatic increase in volume, you find that the risk of a shipment going up in flames on any given day has increases 36 TIMES!!

After hearing about oil trains now running the Alleghany sub, I'm dreading the day I hear about *another* derailment on that line that sends crude oil into the pristine Greenbrier river, ruining it for the next 5-10 generations. 5 coal hoppers derailed and spilled into the river at the WEDT west of Ronceverte a few years ago. Before that, 12 cars were put into the river east of town... everything that derails here goes straight into the river. Between that and fertilizer runoff from The Greenbrier's golf courses, the fish are pretty much gone. Growing up I knew people who lived off the fish in that river.

Canada deserves to extract and sell their oil, as does North Dakota or anyone else anywhere. But what we need is to make *smart* decisions about *how* we do it, not just the cheapest way. Actually, that fact has not changed much in the history of humans, the risks have just gotten bigger. I'd hate to see the film of that train wrecking a mile up the track at the ethanol plant... or in the middle of town. 8-O (just noticed there's no "suprised" or "shocked" emoticon?)