From the NBC article linked in the original post.
The boom has left a number of companies scrambling for tank cars to move the oil, and the report says that led to several cases in which companies sent cars out that did not meet standards.
Excellent example of a reporter miss-quoting a written report to make something appear more of a concern or more dangerous than it is simply to increase the scare value of their own report.
What the report really said.
6. One transloader released loaded tank cars that were out of specification (safety appliances). The pressure to ship those cars was more than the risk of failure in transportation or discovery by FRA. (Rail car shortage is a major concern. We have had cases of cars being shipped out of specification.)
Note the part in parentheses, “Safety appliances”…, anybody out there know what that means?
Not what the reporter implies or may want you to think, or what the un informed casual reader may surmise…a safety appliance is not an appliance to make the car safe for transportation of product, but are the devices in place that allow railroaders to safely work on and with the car, grab irons, sill stirrups, cross over platforms, hand holds and side rails, pin levers and such.
Nothing whatsoever to do with ability of the car to safely carry the product inside.
And take a wild guess at who most likely discovered these cars “out of specification?
A car man or railroader at a terminal doing the normal inspection performed on all trains that pass through terminals.
Blaming the railroad for something ONE of the trans loaders and or shipping companies did makes perfect sense?
How?
Here’s some food for thought.
Bad order cars, cars with a safety appliance bad order or an actual operational bad order, (worn or missing brake shoe, bad wheel set, sharp wheel flange, broken brake rigging, stuff like that) are big dollar business.
Car departments at all major railroads love to find them, they bill repairs at the AAR Manual of Interchange rate, which specifies exactly how the cars must be repaired and what materials can be used, this thing is a seriously thick book that details down to the particular metal grade a cotter pin used to hold a cut lever handle in place can be made of….in the real world such a cotter pin might cost 99 cents, in the railroad world, it’s a $5.00 part.
On my small class 3 railroad our car department routinely bills several million dollars of repairs quarterly to each of our class 1 member lines for bad order repair…trust me, not a car one can enter our railroad without being looked over at least twice, once on arrival, and once on departure at the minimum, and you can bank on the class 1 roads doing the same to these unit trains, it is big business money.
No matter how valuable or how “hot” a car might be, it will be inspected by the railroad, and cut out of the train if any bad order of any type is found.
What you are looking at is a situation being sensationalized for no other reason than it allows people with an agenda to wave their respective flags and get valuable press coverage for their 15 minutes of fame.
Be they reporters, city mayors, congressmen, the FRA or the NTSB, even a few forum members are using these few incidents to create an atmosphere of fear and misunderstanding.
The reporters of course do so to increase readership, nothing sells better than disaster beside sex and money, the FRA and NTSB are simply doing their jobs as they see it, and the forum members, well, I get the feeling they have their own agenda, and from what I gather from the majority of their postings, that agenda is that they don’t like railroaders or railroads all that much, and post here simply to cause dissent and fear, the better to allow themselves their own 15 minutes!
Now for something from the silly but relevant thought department.
Using the fear monger approach and placing things out of context to make a point and further an agenda…
I would bet that almost all of the forum members out there are going to do something tomorrow that taken out of context is extremely dangerous and possible deadly for some of you.
All of you are going to dispense and transport a hazardous liquid, one many times more volatile that this crude oil under discussion, and all of you are going to do so with no formal training on how to dispense this product, nor how to safely transport this product, much less will any of you have any type of shipping papers, nor will any of you have placards displayed to warn first responders if you have an accident that results in a release of this hazardous material.
You are going to transport this product in a single walled tank, made from mild steel easily punctured, a child can drive a screwdriver through this tank with little effort, and said tank will be held in place with two strips of plumbing strap and four mild steel bolts, and the tank will be located in such a fashion that any rear impact with the transport vehicle will easily rupture the tank, as will any large debris on the surface you use to transport this tank.
The device used to protect this tank is only required, by federal law, to withstand an impact of 5 mph or less.
You are going to transport this packing group 2 flammable liquid in close proximity to and with several thousand other people similarly un trained and not qualified, and during transport, your shipment will be subject to the random and illogical actions of these thousand others who may or may not be qualified.
Of course, I am talking about you filling your gas tank on your car…you’re going to put approximately 20 gallons of gasoline in a cheaply made tank, hung by equally cheap straps in the rear of your car, and drive around in populated areas with a thousand other people, any one of which could easily rear end you and rupture the gas tank…you see cars on fire all the time on the evening and morning news.
Yet if this was a railroad we were discussing, the person dispensing the gasoline into a tank car would be required to wear full hazmat suit, including a respirator, have the tank car properly grounded, and must have a license and be fully trained to dispense the gas.
Then the person transporting the tank car would be required to have shipping papers with all the hazmat infor, the car must be placarded, and the person must pass a federally mandated test on handling the gasoline, and have a response guide with details on what to do if an accident happens in their possession at all times.
You on the other hand, with absolutely no formal training are allowed to dispense this extremely dangerous liquid at will, you can fill your automobile fuel tank with it, you can put it in hand carried gas cans, and you transport it on freeways and roads full of other drivers busy texting their friends instead of driving their cars, and no one blinks an eye at this, yet if you think it through….
So why is it that you, totally un trained, are allowed to dispense and transport what amounts to a liquid bomb in the back of your automobile in the company of thousands of other un trained people in densely populated areas, and do so in a tank that is far more easily ruptured than a railroad tank car, often at speeds twice the speed the tank car travels, all while subject to the random and un-predictable actions of all the other drivers around you…no one seems to be bothered by that.
On the other hand, in my capacity as a freight train conductor, I am required by federal law to attend formal training on how to handle this stuff, have to follow federal laws about the documentation on the tank car and its contents, placement of this tank in my train, follow strict procedures on moving this tank, on a surface that has to meet federal requirement as to speed a am allowed to move and move only in a tightly controlled environment with almost no traffic or other trains near me at any time.
Odd double standard at work…I guess because it is convenient and almost a necessity for all of us to use and transport gasoline in our cars, and because we want to do so, then it is ok.
Of course, the solution to all the automobile fires, the death of entire families in several instances should, following the rational of the panic mongers, be to simply ban all automobile gas tanks.
Makes almost as much sense as banning all the tank cars on the rail, yes?