Eastern Railroad Discussion > Time to change rules for track, equipment etc inspections?

The business site Business Insider raises the question of whether it's time for the federal government to impose much more detailed rules on railroads hauling crude oil, ethanol, LPG, and other haz-mat products.

Describing what it calls a culture of self regulation, the article notes only 76 federal inspectors are responsible for monitoring the work of thousands of rail employees. Not mentioned is the increase of state rail inspectors, such as in New York.

The article draws heavily on a NY Times op-ed which calls for much greater federal monitoring of the railroads, similar to what is done on the airlines. Regular, federally supervised inspections of facilities and equipment, tear downs of equipment, etc.



http://www.businessinsider.com/crude-oil-train-derailments-2015-3

there are plenty of state inspectors that supplement the FRA inspectors ... some railroads may foolishly shortcut the inspection criteria but they know it's not in their best interest ...

my analogy is would you eat a bluefish without checking for bones ... more than likely not but people choke on fish bones everyday when eaten ...

i think the biggest factor is the quick long haul turnaround for crude tanks ... 24hr load time -1600`+ mile travel route - 24hr unloading time - 1600+ mile return trip ... crude tank cars accrue, i'll speculate, 3 TIMES more mileage in the same time frame than an other type of freight car ... covered hopper grain cars maybe have the same or close to the same mileage but the turnaround time is nowhere near the 24hr loading/unloading times for that of crude ... that's a lot of car and truck/wheel set wear that carries one of the most volatile commodity on rails and since the crude runs in unit trains they tank cars are not spread out throughout the train of non volatile ladings to avoid a compounding explosive situation ...

so with the unit crude tank trains on the road say 3 times more than other trains the car inspections should also reflect that frequency ...

Posted from Android

Can't imagine fielding more rules than we already have ... The problem is railroads are required to haul this lousy low volatile crude.  People should be bothering Big Oil ...

Out_Of_Service Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> there are plenty of state inspectors that
> supplement the FRA inspectors ... some railroads
> may foolishly shortcut the inspection criteria but
> they know it's not in their best interest ...
>
> my analogy is would you eat a bluefish without
> checking for bones ... more than likely not but
> people choke on fish bones everyday when eaten ...
>
>
> i think the biggest factor is the quick long haul
> turnaround for crude tanks ... 24hr load time
> -1600`+ mile travel route - 24hr unloading time -
> 1600+ mile return trip ... crude tank cars accrue,
> i'll speculate, 3 TIMES more mileage in the same
> time frame than an other type of freight car ...
> covered hopper grain cars maybe have the same or
> close to the same mileage but the turnaround time
> is nowhere near the 24hr loading/unloading times
> for that of crude ... that's a lot of car and
> truck/wheel set wear that carries one of the most
> volatile commodity on rails and since the crude
> runs in unit trains they tank cars are not spread
> out throughout the train of non volatile ladings
> to avoid a compounding explosive situation ...
>
> so with the unit crude tank trains on the road say
> 3 times more than other trains the car inspections
> should also reflect that frequency ...
>
> Posted from Android

I don't disagree with your thoughts that oil trains get more miles than mixed freight. However i think unit coal trains have faster load and unload times and high mile routes.   I would think the railroads would have noticed by now if that caused issues.
They should already get 1000 mile inspections so in theory they would be inspected more often.

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/15 12:39 by howeld.

It is important that federal inspection of railroads remains the standard, can imagine the madness resulting from the stats enforcing different and in some cases conflicting rules.