ALBANY, N.Y. — A new book promises to “lay out the whole damning history” of moving crude oil by railroad, starting with the tragic wreck and inferno at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, on July 6, 2013.
The book is “Bomb Trains: How Industry Greed and Regulatory Failure Put the Public at Risk” by Justin Mikulka.
Mikulka says he began reporting on Lac-Mégantic from Albany in 2013 and compiled his research from reporting he published to the DeSmog website into the book.
On that website, he says regulators did a good job of pretending to make changes after Lac-Mégantic.
“In practice, however, the oil and rail industries and their lobbyists — along with cooperative regulators and politicians — made protecting industry profits the top priority,” Mikulka writes. “The regulatory systems in the U.S. and Canada are so deeply flawed that industry controls the process and prevents the addressing of known risks.”
The independently published paperback is available on Amazon for $11.99. The book is 220 pages and was published July 1.
JAN – All I know about railroading is what I have read in TRAINS-MAG. Over the years several articles have pointed out the problems with the dynamics of unit trains – the harmonic rocking etc – on lower-rated tracks. Reducing the speed (as in your post) hasn’t been a solution if the track is less than ideal.
William McDonald: Before I retired from the Portland and Western one of the jobs I worked would get called upon to take over a loaded Oil Train from the BNSF, typically near St Johns and run it about 50 miles to Beaver near Clatskanie Oregon. The track ran near the Columbia River and though several small town on a water level route. Weight was typically 9000 to 12,000 tons with 2 engines front and 1 on the tail end DUPed.
One of my earlier runs with this type of train I was trying out the cruise type control on the engines to hold track speed of 10 MPH. After 10-15 minutes of running I noted that the rear engine would vary in speed from the head end by as much as 2 MPH. This set up a surge in slack picked up by the liquid inside the cars and seemed to cause the rear engine to start a feed back loop with it revving up speed to maintain 10 MPH and then throttling down when the rear got too fast. As the couplers could break if this continued I shut off the cruise control and ran manually there after.
When these trains first started to this route there were some areas of 25 MPH track speed but after several weeks the track speed was reduced for loaded oil trains to avoid track wear. Handling these trains was an exercise in gentleness with both throttle and dynamic brakes, air brakes were seldom used.
Book sounds communistic to me…. Wouldn’t waste my time.. More false reporting based on accusations instead of the facts
Accusations are not facts, but in our culture, accusations are treated as evidence. This too is a grave injustice to the Truth.
It will be interesting to see if this is actually a fair report on problems or just a hack piece. The title hints towards the latter.
I have run these trains and will buy the book to find out the risks the places I ran though took. After I retired the trains still run along the Columbia River and though Portland Oregon.
I hate when these discussions turn political, so I’ll keep my comments to myself.
If the oil tank cars contain several air filled bladders, it would handle expansion and prevent slosh when a unit oil train attempts to stop per front end dynamic brakes rather than using the train air brakes. Most of oil train derailments were within the first 1/4th to ½ part of the train unless caused by track or surface problems. In fact oil tank cars should have a strong vinyl or rubber interior that would not tear if the steel of the tank to torn. I would expect this book to be a total collection of fake news without any facts. At this point not of any value. The crew and railroad were cleared by trial.
Jan:
Can you elaborate on your experiences running these trains?