Railworks America

Not that the statistic would be any consolation or comfort, but I can't help wondering how many oil trucks catch fire or spill on our highways every year.

Or consider in comparison how many crude oil pipelines rupture and spill their contents onto the land...

The petroleum companies are delaying as long as possible replacing the DOT111 tank car fleet with safer tank car designs...A cost to be estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.

OlPaint

In the end we will just be paying higher prices. As I understand it's really not about the cost it's about the ability of the tank car manufacturers to be able to build them fast as our guvmt wants it done.

It's an interesting coincidence that this accident happened as 50 people (at least half were protesters) attended a meeting with Phillips 66 and Union Pacific over adding 1.3 miles of track to an existing spur, including 5 new parallel tracks to an oil refinery here at the Nipomo mesa dunes on the central coast of California.....

https://www.google.com/maps/place/2555+ ... 90b384d620



It's about 2 miles from the ocean (notice the sand dunes near it) and is slowing local production cuz not as much oil is being pumped out of the hills here as in the past. So they have been making up the difference by contracting out crude from elsewhere via rail. Now they want to add more track and anticipate unloading up to five trains a week with about 80 tank cars each, with a maximum of about 250 trains arriving each year. This new proposal has brought out the protesters over the safety of oil via rail cars from the increased rail traffic.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/04/01 ... -rail.html

What's interesting to me is that this refinery only does early stage refining of heavy crude and is on the central coast at almost the half way point between San Fransisco and Los Angeles. Oil cans coming from the north will pass through Roseville Yard near Sacramento and come from the south through the West Colton yard near San Bernardino.

Now the crazy twist....

The oil that is processed is pumped into a pipeline that goes 265 miles north to the city of Rodeo (northeast San Francisco Bay) for the final refining stages of making gasoline. So....oil cans coming from the Roseville yard, pass the Rodeo refinery while going the 265 miles south.... only to take a U-turn after early stage refining... and backtracking 265 miles north by pipeline to the Rodeo refinery. Now that's a crazy trip!

EDIT: Fixed that. Just realized that the UP tracks go right past the Rodeo refinery, instead of 13 miles east of it. So the oil does TRULY backtrack if the oil cars came from the north.

It's a crazy trip, but it has to do with what capacity is available at a particular refinery.
The most direct route would actually be through Nevada on the old Los Angeles and Salt Lake sub. We only get about 25 trains a day max around here and most of the route is rural.
I wonder if I'm going to be privy to some elevated rail action around here in the future?

If Las Vegas burns... no big loss really...

BTW; We could avoid most of these train fires if Buzz would just quit smoking along the right of way.