CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A hopper car loaded with 30 tons of ammonium nitrate — a chemical used as fertilizer and as a component in explosives — was empty by the time it arrived at its destination last month, triggering investigations by state and federal authorities, as well as the manufacturer and Union Pacific, the railroad handling the shipment.
A report from KQED, a National Public Radio station in San Francisco, says the loaded covered hopper left the Dyno Nobel explosives plant in Cheyenne, Wyo., on April 12, but was empty two weeks later when the car reached the Saltdale siding near Mojave, Calif. Dyno Nobel says the car was sealed when it left its plant and those seals were still intact when the car reached Saltdale. The company believes a leak in one of the hopper’s bottom gates may have developed in transit, while a Federal Railroad Administration representative says investigation suggests one of the gates was not properly closed.
The FRA, Dyno Noble, UP, and the California Public Utilities Commission are all investigating. Dyno Nobel said the car is being sent back to Wyoming for examination and it hopes to determine how the contents were lost in order to prevent a recurrence.
Ammonium nitrate was an ingredient in the homemade truck bomb used in the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Its sale and transfer has been regulated since 2007 to prevent its use in acts of terrorism.
Suggest using caution on running the Big Boy over that route…something “Big” might happen!
Since it is a fertilizer s well just follow the overgrown vegetation on the various ROWs. if none then definitely stolen.
Here’s NJ’s Hazmat Sheet on Ammonium Nitrate:
https://www.nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/0106.pdf
Note their remarks on Handling and Storage, especially heat. 14 days in a railcar in the May sun? Well, actually it wasn’t in the car all that time but it was supposed to be.
Another 14 days to return? PSR in one of its finest moments!
The missing ammonium nitrate is one thing, but who’s investigating the real problem of it taking UP 14 days to move a car 1000 miles (give or take)?
Must be on the same consist of feed going to Foster Farms.
“…the seals were still intact…”
Where, exactly, were the seals? On the loading openings? On the drop gates? On both? And what constitutes a “seal” in this context? The article says the car was “empty”, but also mentions multiple gates while only citing potential fault with one, so it would seem that the other drop channels should have had _some_ amount of product in them. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of the investigation; I hope that NEWSWIRE publishes the findings.
I assume they are referring to the custom type seal indicating the load was not tempered with. The article is misleading, if I misplace 30 tonnes of ammonium nitrate my supervisor might not be so understanding.
The whole article makes little sense. 30 tons is only 60,000 lbs and the car should easily transport twice that amount. If ONE of the hopper doors leaked and there were two (if not more) on the car about only half would be gone. Now if it had a leak like that it would be VERY APPERENT right off the bat at the shippers loadout let alone spread along the right of way por in every yard and siding the car happened to be immobile.
As for the seals, they would be at EVERY entrance and exit point on the car and for what constitutes a ‘seal?’ The seal being intact and not pulled apart and stuck back together (very obvious) would cover that one.
We ran ten to twenty foundry sand cars thru the yard I worked at in Grand Rapids daily from Muskegon to Defiance GM foundry. With the amount of nice beach sand that leaked out of even the newest cars in the captive fleet I often wondered how much of it actually made it to Defiance! Cars were weighed both out of the sand plant and into the foundry so I assume GM didn’t pay for the losses. The losses went home to our beach on the lake too by the way.