RE: STRANGE LOOKING OIL TRAIN - I've seen such oil trains here in Chicago on the BNSF (just before they move onto NS track), indeed just the other day, I saw what was possibly the same oil train you saw in Chesterton? My thought was that what we were seeing is the line to which each car is loaded, rendered visible in this respect: After loading, the train had been spending many days at very cold temperatures in North Dakota and Minnesota before descending to these lower latitudes where, on the day I noticed this, the weather was quite a bit warmer and rather moisture laden. It would take days for the temperature of the oil in these cars to rise to the warmer temps, much slower than the vapor at the top quarter of each car, so that we were seeing moisture from the air condensing precisely on the exterior of the colder bottom 3 quarters of each car where the cold oil within retains low temperatures. The 2 or 3 times I've noticed this phenomenon, the weather conditions were appropriate for this. We think it's cold here in Illinois and Indiana, but it's tropical compared to the real north Country!
First reason that comes to mind is to keep the cars and load cooler. With high volaile crudes such as Bakken crudes, any redction in crude oil temperature will reduce vapor pressure and thus improve safety margin.
Why are the tank cars for oil now painted white with black bands around the loading area?
Also, there was an eastbound NS oiler at 655am thru Chesterton that was extremely strange looking. The tank cars looked as if they had gone thru either a big snow storm or a severe frost, but I dont think that was the case. The cars were obviously black. The extreme tops of the cars were black for an strip about 2 feet wide going down the length of the car. Then the cars were white on the sides down the sides to the haz mat placcard then black again. The ends of the cars were white about 1/2 down the ends, then black on the bottom.
There were no reporting marks or decals visable on the cars. It was like the cars were wrapped with a white sheeting or very poorly painted. The white was not uniform. It was one of the strangest trains I have seen. Some cars were all black. Almost like a ghost train.
I saw this on the Chesterton In web cam. Not sure if this is archived or not. I took a photo of my screen with my smart phone, but have no idea how to link it to this thread. If someone wants to see it, PM me and give your email address and perhaps someone else can post it.
Ed
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