Author: David Thomas

Commentary

Tank car builders don’t agree on DOT-111 obsolescence timeline

Tank car builder The Greenbrier Companies is urging the White House Office of Management and Budget to disregard advice by the company’s own industry trade group, the Railway Supply Institute-Committee on Tank Cars (RSI-CTC), and proceed full speed ahead with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s proposed schedule for fleet renewal.
Commentary
  • News

API twisting DOE report on crude oil

A survey of crude oil science commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy is being cited, rather loosely, by the oil industry’s national lobby to discredit proponents of compulsory treatment of crude oil before it is loaded into railcars.

Via Rail pondering alternative Ontario routing for suspended Canadian

After months of late arrivals due to track congestion on CN’s northern Ontario main line, compounded by slow orders arising from CN’s efforts to recover from two tar sands oil train explosions, Via Rail is examining an alternative routing for the Canadian,the continent’s last classic streamliner, originally Canadian Pacific’s premier luxury passenger train.
Commentary

U.S. sway affects Canada CBR safety focus

Transport Canada’s selection March 11, 2015 of new tank car specifications is surely a harbinger of the choice the White House will make later this spring from among the options proposed by U.S. rail and hazmat regulators.

Commentary
  • News

Bitumen fireballs wreck tank car transition scheme

The second eruption of fireballs near the northern Ontario village of Gogama March 7 adds a third category of crude to the list of culprits in the recent spate of oil train explosions. “Synbit” now joins “dilbit” and untreated Bakken crude oil among the commodities proven to ignite and explode upon derailment and breaching of even the newest tank cars.

Why bitumen isn’t necessarily safer than Bakken

The chain reaction fireballs that attended the Feb. 16, 2015 derailment of a CSX unit oil train in populated West Virginia probably blinded observers to the significance of the concurrent derailment and explosions of a CN oil train in a remote and uninhabited area of northern Ontario. Most reports treated the two events as equals, given that both trains consisted of recently manufactured CPC-1232 tank cars loaded with crude oil.

  • News

Hiatus in CBR mishaps ends with triplet of derailments

The vintage of the tank cars involved in a triplet of near-concurrent oil train derailments over the long President’s Day weekend are at the immediate focal point of investigators and the entire crude-by-rail sector.
Commentary
  • News

Canada: Grasping government tightens grip on grain

Canada’s Conservative government extended its takeover of railway grain movements Nov. 29, ordering CN and Canadian Pacific to shift specified quantities of grain each week throughout the winter, or be fined $100,000 per violation.