Commentary

High times ahead for Canadian rails

Canada’s three major railways should benefit from the Oct. 19, 2015 sea-to-sea election sweep by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party of Canada. Trudeau’s party even managed to get four members of parliament elected in Alberta’s two metropolises, Calgary and Edmonton—the ideological and financial anchors of the defeated Stephen Harper’s pro-pipeline and anti-rail Conservative government.

DOT-117 defined

The wait for a new tank car specification is over. Now comes the “fun” part: Retrofits to older cars, and potentially onerous operating rules.

Commentary

Keystone boosters turfed from office in bitumen’s homeland

Prospects for the contentious Keystone XL pipeline proposed to connect Alberta’s northern tar sands with U.S. Gulf Coast refiners has endured another brutal body check, this time from the home team. The province’s brand-new, left-leaning government elected May 5 says it will cease its predecessor’s long campaign of supplicating and bullying President Barack Obama for the pipeline’s approval.

DOT-117 tank car rule debuts with controversy

The final spec for the now-official DOT-117 (TC-117 in Canada) non-pressurized tank car adopts the most demanding of the technical requirements first offered for comment in the notice of rulemaking: jacketed and thermally insulated shells of 9/16-inch steel, full-height half-inch-thick head shields, sturdier, re-closeable pressure relief valves and rollover protection for top fittings.

Commentary

FRA freezes on tank car sloshing; DOE oil volatility bombshell drops like a dud

How crude oil sloshing inside moving tank cars affects train stability was under close scrutiny by the Federal Railroad Administration, the regulator’s Acting Administrator told reporters back on March 13. That was after a string of mid-winter oil train disasters exposed the prevailing focus on tank car thickness to be essentially pointless in the quest to prevent oil train derailments and explosions.

The Canadian resumes transcontinental schedule

Somewhere near the photo-worn steel trestle at Miniota, Manitoba, Via Rail’s eastbound and westbound Canadians will meet Sunday, April 12, 2015 for the first time since a pair of mid-winter oil train explosions closed CN’s transcontinental main line through northern Ontario.

NTSB wants all tanks in a blanket

Proponents of current plans to renew the continent’s crude oil tank car fleet arrived at work April 7 to find another embarrassing egg laid at their doorstep, and not by the Easter Bunny.
Commentary

Tank car builders don’t agree on DOT-111 obsolescence timeline

Tank car builder The Greenbrier Companies is urging the White House Office of Management and Budget to disregard advice by the company’s own industry trade group, the Railway Supply Institute-Committee on Tank Cars (RSI-CTC), and proceed full speed ahead with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s proposed schedule for fleet renewal.
Commentary

API twisting DOE report on crude oil

A survey of crude oil science commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy is being cited, rather loosely, by the oil industry’s national lobby to discredit proponents of compulsory treatment of crude oil before it is loaded into railcars.

Via Rail pondering alternative Ontario routing for suspended Canadian

After months of late arrivals due to track congestion on CN’s northern Ontario main line, compounded by slow orders arising from CN’s efforts to recover from two tar sands oil train explosions, Via Rail is examining an alternative routing for the Canadian,the continent’s last classic streamliner, originally Canadian Pacific’s premier luxury passenger train.
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