
Deadly Cargo Still Rides the Rails - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/world/canada/lac-megantic-quebec-train-explosion.html
======
en4bz
And yet when a pipeline was proposed it was quickly shot down [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_East)

ADDENDUM: The amount of rail accidents in Canada is shockingly high. Multiple
per day [2].

[2] [http://www.bst-tsb.gc.ca/eng/stats/rail/2018/sser-
ssro-2018....](http://www.bst-tsb.gc.ca/eng/stats/rail/2018/sser-
ssro-2018.html)

~~~
r00fus
False dichotomy.

Let’s limit extraction instead and invest instead into clean infrastructure
like power lines.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Let’s limit extraction instead_

Just blocking pipelines without restricting extraction virtually guarantees
these outcomes. Restricting extraction while shifting transport to pipelines
looks like a better solution than just blocking pipelines.

~~~
adrianN
Bad publicity for fossil fuels is good news for the climate. Any new
infrastructure for fossil fuels creates investors with an interest in keeping
extraction going.

~~~
throwaway3627
Incentives (carrots) and enforcement (sticks) are the only things most big
polluters will respect. And that will require strong political will,
leadership and outreach relationships to accomplish, one region at a time.

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pseudolus
One of the largest peacetime evacuations (>200,000 people) in North America
occurred in 1979 when a train carrying toxic materials derailed in
Mississauga, Ontario (about 30km from Toronto) [0]. Yet, even with the benefit
of the knowledge of that barely averted disaster, trains were and are still
barreling through and in proximity of cities.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Mississauga_train_derailm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Mississauga_train_derailment)

~~~
phs2501
In nearly every case the city is there only because the railroad was there
first. Obviously reasonable and pertinent safety measures should be taken
("Safety First", etc) but I think it's pretty unreasonable to ask the
railroads to move their 100+-year-old routes because people built a city
around it.

~~~
asveikau
And even for the cases of older cities that predate rail, what exactly would
be the point of a railway that doesn't go anywhere?

Seems like a world seen through north american suburbs... "Why did you have to
build the rail so close to where people live?!" Question answers itself.

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dmix
The Transportation Board of Canadian has a great video w/ animations of the
incident:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVMNspPc8Zc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVMNspPc8Zc)

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bravoetch
I assumed the brakes were applied unless air pressure was available. Same as
truck / trailer brakes. In the article it references air pressure is required
for the brakes to be applied - is there a reason it can't be the other way
around?

~~~
tlb
This was George Westinghouse's big invention from the 1860s:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_air_brake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_air_brake)

It'd be great if you could use a spring to apply the brakes and an air
cylinder to hold the brakes open. But the force needed to apply brakes is too
much for springs, so it uses an air cylinder to apply the force. There's a
complicated system where under normal conditions, pressure in the hose running
the length of the train is fed into a reservoir in each car. When the pressure
in the line drops (either a disconnect or the engineer hitting the brakes), a
valve connects the brake cylinders to the reservoir and the air pressure
applies the brakes.

So yes, if you leave some isolated rail cars sitting there with the air brakes
applied, the pressure will slowly leak away over hours or days and the car
will start rolling.

~~~
jacobolus
Apparently before air brakes dudes would run around on top of the moving train
(even in rain/snow) manually cranking the brake on each car whenever the train
needed to stop.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brakeman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brakeman)

------
habosa
In Philadelphia I used to take walks down by some train tracks and I'd often
be only a few feet away from stopped or slow moving trains. I always wondered
what sort of security is there on trains? What would stop someone from
attaching some sort of dangerous cargo to the train and just letting it roll
into the next big city?

Based on the amount of graffiti I see on trains ... I'd guess nothing.

~~~
betterunix2
It is not so simple to "attach" cargo to a train. The train crew knows how
many cars the train consists of and there are periodic "defect detectors" that
among other things report the number of axles to the crew. The crew also has a
manifest, and eventually they would notice if something was out of place.
Individual train cars also have radio tags that are used to monitor their
status as they move:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_equipment_identifica...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_equipment_identification)

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echelon
Thanks for sharing this.

I live right next to a rail yard in Atlanta, partially because of the novelty.
I was already worried about pollution, but now I have this scenario to keep me
up at night (as unlikely as it may be).

Is there a place to look up what hazardous materials a train line can (or
does) carry? The line is CSX, if that matters.

~~~
Symbiote
If you have a good enough view, you should get some idea from the diamond
labels.

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nerdponx
I'd be curious to know the causes of the other recent runaway train incidents.
They demurred on whether adding a second operator to each train would help,
but I feel like you could answer that question by looking at those recent
cases, no?

Having a second operator in this case would've meant twice as many hands to
operate hand brakes, and ostensibly less operator fatigue to begin with.

~~~
kd5bjo
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_8888_incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_8888_incident)
Is the only other one I know about; the engineer got off to change a turnout
and was unable to reboard as the train accelerated away.

~~~
userbinator
_However, the engineer "inadvertently failed to complete the selection
process", meaning that the train's engine was set to accelerate, not to
brake._

The fact that braking could be confused with accelerating, especially on a
vehicle which can effectively only travel in two directions, sounds more like
a big UI failure to me.

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moltar
And now Quebec also approved transporting aircraft fuel thru the downtown of
Montreal.

[https://mtlcityweblog.com/2019/07/15/trains-carrying-
kerosen...](https://mtlcityweblog.com/2019/07/15/trains-carrying-kerosene-
will-be-crossing-town/)

People just don’t learn ...

~~~
betterunix2
...or the alternatives were less safe (trucks) or too expensive (realigning
the tracks).

~~~
Gibbon1
After the San Bernardino train disaster a maintence tech for the Calnev
pipeline told me the pipeline was out of service for 10-12 weeks. During that
time tanker trucks were used to carry gasoline and diesel from Los Angels to
Las Vegas. There were six major accidents involving tankers trucks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino_train_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino_train_disaster)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calnev_Pipeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calnev_Pipeline)

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KhoomeiK
Thought this was about Rust and Ruby

------
dreamcompiler
Lessons learned report:

[https://youtu.be/larpYRCvZoU](https://youtu.be/larpYRCvZoU)

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pcr910303
Am I the only one that came here thinking the article is about Rust’s package
manager & Ruby’s web framework?

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peterwwillis
I read these articles and I get depressed. Not about the 47 people, or the
dangerous trains chugging their way around the country. I get depressed that
in Baltimore, about this many people are killed every month. I get depressed
that in Chicago someone is murdered every 17 hours. That 35,000 people die
from cars every year, and handguns. But we should _really_ stop those trains
from causing an accident, because one time is too many.

~~~
nexuist
Can't we work to stop all of these at once? Society is multithreaded.

~~~
peterwwillis
No it isn't. Society is like AWS. It contains many organizations, which each
contain many accounts, which contain many services, which contain many
instances, any one of which may be multithreaded, or not. "Society" does not
actively work to solve all problems at the same time, just like every single
piece of computation inside AWS is not necessarily multithreaded.

