Federal Railroad Administration

North Dakota seizes initiative in CBR degasification

The vital other shoe in crude by rail reform will drop not in Ottawa or Washington, but in Bismark, N.Dak., where, in the void created by federal inaction, officials are preparing to use state jurisdiction over natural resources to order the degasification of petroleum at the wellhead.

B&P tunnel study moves forward

With a goal of addressing a longstanding bottleneck along the Northeast Corridor, the Federal Railroad Administration, Maryland Department of Transportation, and Amtrak are advancing an engineering and environmental study to examine various improvements to the 141-year-old Baltimore and Potomac (B&P) Tunnel in Baltimore, Md.
Commentary
  • News

Data-phobic FRA’s “Book of Mormon”

Rail labor’s sabots are showing. It’s not a pleasant sight. “Sabots”—French for wooden shoes and the etymological root of “sabotage”—were thrown into the gears of textile looms by 15th century workers in failed hopes of thwarting technology.

CSX CBR train derails in Virginia; no injuries reported

CSX workers and others on Thursday, May 1, 2014, continued to assess the damage caused by a crude-by-rail (CBR) consist that derailed near downtown Lynchburg, Va., Wednesday afternoon, resulting in at least 12 derailed cars, three-to-four tank cars rupturing, burning oil, and oil slicks in the James River.

Commentary

Dear NTSB . . . . .

The National Transportation Safety Board recently released an open letter to MTA Metro-North Railroad containing its initial safety recommendations derived from the ongoing investigation into the Dec. 1, 2013 derailment of train 8808, which killed four passengers and injured 59.
Commentary

Data drought haunts FRA crew-size mandate

By the Federal Railroad Administration’s own congressional testimony, the years 2012 and 2013 were among the railroads’ safest on record, while the relatively few train crashes were mostly the result of human error and track defects.

Most Bakken crude can move under FRA Emergency Order

The most onerous burdens under the Emergency Order issued by the Federal Railroad Administration Feb. 25 fall upon crude shippers and transloaders. The earlier regulatory vagueness concerning the classification of crude oil has now been sharpened by specific prescriptions for evaluating “flash point; boiling point; corrosivity to steel and aluminum; presence and content of compounds such as sulfur/hydrogen sulfide; percentage presence of flammable gases; and the vapor pressure at 50ºC.”
  • M/W

FRA amends track inspection regulations

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on Jan. 24, 2014 issued amended regulations contained within its Federal Track Safety Standards that govern rail inspections. The amended regulations “will help identify rail flaws and further eliminate the risk of derailments,” FRA said.
LOAD MORE