Eastern Railroad Discussion > US oil to New Brunswick, Canada

The new Railpace has an interesting set of comments about the shipments of North Dakota oil to New Brunswick, Canada. The Irving companies have become significant buyers of Bakken crude.

On page 37, there's a mention that the Maine, Montreal & Atlantic passed its second crude oil train to the NBSR on June 8. Additional oil trains were handled on June 19 and 24. That would suggest the first 606 oil train may have been handed over around June 1, as there's a picture of an eastbound oil train on May 31. The June 8 train had 107 cars.

The same page (37) also notes that CSX ran its second crude oil train to Rotterdam Jct NY (near Schenectady). The PanAm railways took the June 13 test oil train of 104 cars to Mattamwkeag ME. The train was marked K-416-11 on CSX, and ran with CSX power to Waterville ME. PAR four axle power handled it north from there.

So it took them all of one month of running unit oil trains before they piled one up and nearly burnt down a whole town?

P Wrote:
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> So it took them all of one month of running unit
> oil trains before they piled one up and nearly
> burnt down a whole town?

It would seem that way. The Lac-Megantic explosion train might have been the fifth of the series.

No doubt the regulators will be looking at procedures, whether previous trains had been tied down on the mountain, etc. The engine fire will undoubtedly be the confounding variable, however.

There have been many more oil trains across the MMA than that. CP 606's from out west have been running for some time to Montreal and handoff to MMA.

Bill Miller
Galt, ON