# Train derailment sends oil tanker into West Virginia river



## rkenney

A train carrying more than 100 tankers of crude oil derailed in southern West Virginia on Monday, sending at least one into the Kanawha River, igniting at least 14 tankers and sparking a house fire, officials said.

Train Derailment


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## Fire21

Wow, what a mess. Luckily it was in suburban/rural territory, and not in the middle of a big city!


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## dasB&M2-6-0

Initial report from CSX had just ONE tank car on fire....live report @ 6:30 PM ET showed at least EIGHT ablaze....!!
Report says the train had 109 cars....IIRC, the weather was deteriorating at the time of the accident.....will be interesting to see what the NTSB finds...
This incident, while still tragic, pales in comparison to last year's derailment in eastern Quebec, north of Maine -- THAT fireball nearly took out an entire town!!

May your freight ALWAYS roll smoothly...and ON TIME!!


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## Big Ed

rkenney said:


> A train carrying more than 100 tankers of crude oil derailed in southern West Virginia on Monday, sending at least one into the Kanawha River, igniting at least 14 tankers and sparking a house fire, officials said.
> 
> Train Derailment


I just posted this in my trains gone wild thread Bob.
I didn't have time to post it last night.

I didn't see that you posted this......till now. hwell:


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## rkenney

Latest update on this derailment shows that these were voluntarily upgraded to safer cars.

Wonder what a pipeline 'derailment' looks like?

Of course the Obama techno wizards (probably the climate change idiots) have proposed billions in safety upgrades for the railroad as a result of this accident. Money means nothing when its not your money!

Read about it here:

Safer oil tank cars


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## Fire21

I looked up the length of the CPC 1232 rail tank car, and the tank portion is 53' 11-3/8"...54 feet. 27,000 of those have been built at a cost of $7 billion.

27,000 cars at 54 feet each equals 523 miles. How much pipeline could have been built with that money? Remove the trucks, couplers, safety valving on each car, and other incidentals on each car...and we could use that money to build more than 523 miles of pipeline.

I couldn't find an exact height of each tank portion of a car, but it looks to be in the 15 to 18 foot range. Most likely a pipeline wouldn't be that large, so utilizing the same material from a tank car to make a smaller pipe, each tank car-worth of metal would produce a pipe greater than 54' in length. Therefore the material from 27,000 tank cars could be used to make more than 523 miles of pipeline.

Yes, there's a chance of pipeline failure, but I wonder if environmental effects would be less than, equal to, or greater than what we've seen in train accidents?


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## MtRR75

Fire21 said:


> Yes, there's a chance of pipeline failure, but I wonder if environmental effects would be less than, equal to, or greater than what we've seen in train accidents?


I suspect that pipeline failures would be less frequent than train derailments. In a pipeline the only things that are moving are the oil and the pumps. Far fewer moving parts to fail than in a train. However, a pipeline rupture has the POTENTIAL to dump much more oil in a hurry than does a train with a fixed amount of oil in separate compartments. In a pipeline, the size of the spill will be determined by the size of the leak, how quickly the leak is detected, and how quickly the flow can be turned off. I suspect that there is a lot of technology being developed to reduce the response times to leaks in pipelines.


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## Fire21

MtRR75 said:


> I suspect that there is a lot of technology being developed to reduce the response times to leaks in pipelines.


We know that technology exists for leak detection in pipelines. I'd think all they'd need to do would be to install automatic valves that would shut both up and down stream of where a leak was detected. That would limit spill size. I know...nothing is ever as easy as it sounds!


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## johnfl68

New Picture from the site:












I feel sorry for the people living in the house that got leveled.


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## Fire21

Glad they weren't hurt!!! They really did build their home between a rock and a hard place, didn't they! Sure looks like their house was ground zero.


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## Fire21

*10 Derailments a Year???*

http://www.firehouse.com/news/11853...il-and-perhaps-catch-fire-at-10-per-year-rate


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## MtRR75

MtRR75 said:


> I suspect that pipeline failures would be less frequent than train derailments. In a pipeline the only things that are moving are the oil and the pumps. Far fewer moving parts to fail than in a train. However, a pipeline rupture has the POTENTIAL to dump much more oil in a hurry than does a train with a fixed amount of oil in separate compartments. In a pipeline, the size of the spill will be determined by the size of the leak, how quickly the leak is detected, and how quickly the flow can be turned off. I suspect that there is a lot of technology being developed to reduce the response times to leaks in pipelines.


I'm having a rethinking on this. In my mind, all of the recent train accidents caused by stupid drivers stopping on grade crossings tips the balance of safety strongly towards pipelines. Stupid, clueless, people rarely run into pipelines.


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## rkenney

MtRR75 said:


> Stupid, clueless, people rarely run into pipelines.


They could though! Just give them a little time!hwell:


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## infernisdiem

It would be more environmentally sound to do the pipelines, but with all the pipelines I am waiting for failures to occur. Like up here in Maine, we have all of this natural gas pipelines, going from house to house. In Portland they had a propane line break and ended up destroying the backside of a building. I am waiting for a scifi style explosion that takes out an entire town.


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## Fire21

There have been sci-fi style explosions of rail tankers over the years which have taken out large portions of smaller towns, such as Belt, MT on Nov. 26, 1976; or Waverly, TN Feb. 24, 1978; or Kingman, AZ on July 5 1973; or Lac-Mégantic, Quebec on July 6, 2013. Granted, those and many others involved train wrecks/derailments, but the point is, transportation of hazardous materials, whether via pipeline or tank container, is risky.

The only real way I can think of to avoid the exposure to mankind and towns would be to reroute hiways and rails around those areas. But, boy, would *that* be expensive!!


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