CP Rail Reluctant to Transport Crude; Risks and Aging Rails Ignored?

Flames erupt from the scene of a crude-oil train derailment Feb. 16 near Timmins, in Ontario, Canada.

Crude-oil train wrecks raise questions about safety claims 

LA Times  By Ralph Vartabedian          03/12/15

Four accidents in the last month involving trains hauling crude oil across North America have sent flames shooting hundreds of feet into the sky, leaving some experts worried that public safety risks have been gravely underestimated.   

 The industry acknowledges that it needs to perform better....

...Critics, however, say the industry's position misses the point. All it is going to take is one major accident to change the entire calculus.

Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and among the top safety experts in the country, believes the government has misjudged the risk posed by the growing number of crude-oil trains.

"We have never had a situation equivalent to 100 tank cars end to end traveling through local communities," Hall said. "This is probably the most pressing safety issue in the country. The industry has turned a deaf ear."....   

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Dangerous Trains, Aging Rails

By MARCUS STERN    MARCH 12, 2015   New York Times

….explosions have generally been attributed to the design of the rail cars — they’re notoriously puncture-prone — and the volatility of the oil; it tends to blow up. Less attention has been paid to questions surrounding the safety and regulation of the nation’s aging network of 140,000 miles of freight rails, which carry their explosive cargo through urban corridors, sensitive ecological zones and populous suburbs.

Case in point: The wooden trestles that flank the Mobile and Ohio railroad bridge, built in 1898, as it traverses Alabama’s Black Warrior River between the cities of Northport and Tuscaloosa. Oil trains rumble roughly 40 feet aloft, while joggers and baby strollers pass underneath. One of the trestles runs past the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater. Yet when I visited last May, many of the trestles’ supports were rotted and some of its cross braces were dangling or missing.

The public has only one hope of finding out if such centenarian bridges are still sturdy enough to carry these oil trains. Ask the railroads. That’s because the federal government doesn’t routinely inspect rail bridges. In fact, the government lacks any engineering standards whatsoever for rail bridges. Nor does it have an inventory of them.

The only significant government intrusion into the railroads’ self-regulation of the nation’s 70,000 to 100,000 railroad bridges is a requirement that the companies inspect them each year. But the Federal Railroad Administration, which employed only 76 track inspectors as of last year, does not routinely review the inspection reports and allows each railroad to decide for itself whether or not to make repairs......  more here

Rail’s apprehensions

Canadian Pacific’s board expresses reluctance to stay in crude-by-rail business

Gary Park

For Petroleum News Bakken  March 13, 2015

Canadian Pacific Railway has disclosed that its directors are reluctant to continue transporting crude oil - an idea that was swiftly quashed by the Canadian government, but was reignited by two more derailments of crude trains.....    more here