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Page added on March 7, 2015
Crude oil train derailed in Ontario, fire reported
A Canadian National Railway Co train carrying crude oil has derailed near the Northern Ontario community of Gogama, with the crew reporting a fire but no injuries, the company said on Saturday.
A preliminary assessment indicated a bridge over a waterway had been damaged and a number of tank cars were in the waterway after the derailment, Canadian National’s second in the region in just three days and third in less than a month.
“Emergency crews are conducting a full site assessment to determine the precise number of cars involved,” said CN spokesman Mark Hallman in an e-mail.
Local media said the derailment had forced the closure of a nearby highway and photos showing clouds of black smoke were posted online.
The railway did not immediately say which type of crude oil the train was carrying, but noted the tank cars were the newer Casualty Prevention Circular 1232 model, which are widely regarded as better protected against damage than older types.
Regulators and operators have criticized earlier DOT-111 cars for being prone to puncture. The CPC 1232’s new safety specifications include a thicker tank, top-fitting protection and a pressure relief system.
The incident comes after another derailment on March 5 blocked Canadian National’s main line in northern Ontario.
CN said the latest derailment happened two miles (3.2 km northwest of Gogama, which is some 600 km north of Toronto. It occurred just before 3 a.m. ET/0800 GMT on Saturday and is affecting rail traffic running between Toronto and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
The railway said both westbound and eastbound traffic on the line was obstructed and could be delayed by 24 hours or more.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said it was deploying a team of investigators and noted the accident was about 37 km from the site of a Feb. 14 accident involving a CN crude oil train.
A boom in oil shipments by rail and a spate of derailments across North America have put heightened focus on rail safety. The U.S. Department of Transportation said in February derailments involving crude oil and ethanol in the United States would cost more than $18 billion over the next 20 years.
15 Comments on "Crude oil train derailed in Ontario, fire reported"
Plantagenet on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 4:23 pm
Oil pipelines are safer than oil trains. Its bad enough that obama is blocking oil pipelines in the US, but you’d think the Canadians would be smart enough to utilize oil pipelines.
dave thompson on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 5:30 pm
How many trains NOT carrying condensate derail? Just shows that the RR infrastructure is in bad repair and we are in the age of limits. No money to fix things and maintain infrastructure, pipeline orno pipeline.
MSN Fanboy on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 5:59 pm
How does it show that Dave?
You’re throwing out an accusation, connecting logic based on…. thin air.
They should build more pipelines, simple.
dave thompson on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 6:11 pm
The PTB know damn well that the current Boom in Bitumen and Condensate extraction is on it’s last legs. AND Trains that derail do so because of faulty and poorly maintained infrastructure not because the train is carrying crude chemicals. If there is no money to maintain what we have, how do we find money to build new?
GregT on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 6:24 pm
MSN,
“They should build more pipelines, simple.”
And what do you believe would be solved by doing so?
Apneaman on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 6:36 pm
Some towns don’t want pipelines near them. Many owners of private property don’t want pipelines on their property. Every well informed person does not want a pipeline running over their drinking water supply. Criminal negligence that leads to railway accidents (externalities) should not be used to blackmail the public into putting up with pipelines they do not want.
BobInget on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 7:11 pm
Tank cars are heavy, even empty;
Full of oil these cars weigh
(wikipedia)
In rail transport, the U.S. DOT-111 tank car, also known as the CTC-111A in Canada,[1] is a type of unpressurized tank car in common use in North America. Tanks built to this specification must be circular in cross section, with elliptical, formed heads set convex outward.[2] They have a minimum plate thickness of 7⁄16 inch (11.1 mm)[3] and a maximum capacity of 34,500 US gallons (131,000 L; 28,700 imp gal).[4] Tanks may be constructed from carbon steel, aluminum alloy, high alloy steel or nickel plate steel[5] by fusion welding.[6]
Up to 80% of the Canadian fleet and 69% of U.S. rail tank cars are DOT-111 type.[1]
DOT-111 cars are equipped with AAR Type E top and bottom shelf Janney couplers designed to maintain vertical alignment to prevent couplers from overriding and puncturing the tank end frames. Many of these transport a wide spectrum of dangerous goods, including 40,000 cars in dedicated service carrying 219,000 car loads of ethanol fuel annually in the U.S.[3]
Hydraulic fracturing of new wells in the shale oil fields in the interior of North America has rapidly increased use of DOT-111 cars to transport crude oil to existing refineries along the coasts.[7] The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway ..
Evolution of the RR Tank Car
Through the years the most noticeable change in tank cars was in size. The 100 barrel tank became the most common size during the 1880’s (The Oil City Derrick and Oil & Gas Journal, 1934). The tanks were about 24-1/2 feet in length and 5 feet six inches in diameter (Redwood, 1913). Then in the 1890’s the tanks were lengthened to 32 feet long and 6 feet diameter which allowed a capacity of 190 barrels (Bolles, 1893). It seems like an increase in size and possibly other modifications happened every decade.
The 32 foot (190 barrel) tank of the 1890’s was built of quarter-inch steel plate. It followed the usual design of having the inlet orifice at the top of the dome and the outlet valve at the bottom to which connecting lines could be attached for emptying. A car could also be unloaded by siphon from the top, but this wasn t the usual practice. In 1892 there were as many as ten thousand tank cars in use in the United States (Bolles, 1893).
By 1916 there were eight different size tank cars for refined oils ranging from 86 barrels to 298 barrels (Bacon and Hamor, 1916) and also greater capacity tanks for crude oil.
Earlier, some tank cars were divided into two or three compartments, each of which held a different refined product. But by the 1940’s that practice was mostly abandoned, the standard tank car carrying only one product at a time. Transverse baffles prevented surging when the car was moving (Shell, 1959). By the 1950’s and probably earlier, the tanks had a top central manhole for filling and for access to allow cleaning and repairs (Shell, 1959).
Some of the large tank cars seen on the tracks today can carry over 600 barrels. They appear to have lost the conspicuous dome although there is a very small one and a device for loading as well as a safety valve. The silhouette of some modern tank cars depart from the strictly barrel-like horizontal cylinder by the ends turning upward somewhat and the middle sagging slightly downward. This shape allows better drainage of the contents and may help to accommodate sloshing when in motion.
Plantagenet on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 8:11 pm
THX Bob.
You are right —- the weight of an oil train makes it more likely to derail then a standard freight train and the volatiles in shale make it more likely to combust
Best posts in this thread go to Bob and MSN
GregT on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 8:47 pm
The weight of an oil train us not what makes it derail. A fully loaded oil car, and a fully loaded grain car will both not fall off of the tracks by themselves. It is the operators of the trains, the speed that they are travelling at, and the tracks themselves that are the problem.
Loaded oil train cars do not derail themselves, people mis-operating the trains and people not maintaining the infrastructure do.
dave thompson on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 8:53 pm
Plant ol’ buddy ol’ pal, “the weight of an oil train makes it more likely to derail then a standard freight train” The weight of a loaded freight train has restrictions no matter what is being transported. A crude chemical train is no more prone to derailment then any other train. Trains derail because of poorly maintained infrastructure.
GregT on Sat, 7th Mar 2015 9:26 pm
planter,
You were doing so well today. Oh well. Tomorrow is another day. Slow down, take a deep breath, and think.
Cheers
claus schelde on Sun, 8th Mar 2015 3:20 am
the only difference between a grain load and an oil load is that the oil is a fluid that, under the right set of circumstances, can go into self oscilllation.
if i was to investigate the oil train derailments, i would take a very sharp look at the baffler arrangement inside these tank cars.
“Transverse baffles prevented surging when the car was moving”. From bobinget’s above.
synapsid on Sun, 8th Mar 2015 4:57 pm
Plant,
Obama is blocking pipelines in the US? He hasn’t approved KXL (yet?). What are the others?
Perk Earl on Sun, 8th Mar 2015 7:37 pm
“Loaded oil train cars do not derail themselves, people mis-operating the trains and people not maintaining the infrastructure do.”
GregT, remember this one? I wasn’t carrying oil but is a good example of driver error.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50a9jcHBf3c
claus schelde on Sun, 8th Mar 2015 11:28 pm
“Loaded oil train cars do not derail themselves, people mis-operating the trains and people not maintaining the infrastructure do.”
I am afraid that train cars filled with liquid actually can derail themselves.
Try to fill a whellbarrow with water and see if you can roll it across the lawn without spilling. You can’t becourse the water will start surging from side to side (oscillating). The barrow might even tip over if the water shifts fast enough. And bingo there you got the equivalent to a tank car derailment.
If the tank cars are 100 % full, then the oil can not shift from side to side, but if their filling procedure for some reason leaves every hundreth car only hallf full, then that car could be the loose cannon, that derails the whole train. Just a theory.