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The TRUTH Behind the Ohio Train DERAILMENT and Media BLACKOUT!!!

What the hell was Norfolk Southern hauling and what were the tank cars labeled as hauling. Those are two truths we will never get to.

Secondly, how much has NS cut maintenance on their lines in the past 3 years.

As for Pete ButtPlug. There is a sign on his ass that says Do Not Hump!! Some of you will get the pun. :lmao:
 
Ironically I spent my entire adult life as a railroad engineer, I’m now retired. A whole lot is being made out of this that isn’t there. The CCTV footage tells the whole story, all four wheels on one car were pin wheeling glowing hot, this started as a brake malfunction on that single car and progressed into a wheel failure and derailment. The wheel failure could have been slag buildup causing the wheel to become so out of round the flanges left the rail, or a thermal fracturing of the wheel. This didn’t start out as a bearing failure, it was an air brake failure causing wheel failure that progressed into other failures. The fact that all four wheels were glowing meant the brakes were applied on that one car. Hot box detectors look up at a specific area outside the wheel at the bearing journal, they would miss hot wheels for some time until the heat from the wheel overheated the bearing itself. You get to sit through countless hours of hazmat training at the railroad and that involves watching films of horrendous derailments involving petrochemicals. This is a textbook example of an air brake fault causing a derailment. It appears the powers that be decided to ignite flammable hazmat cars to burn off explosive contents before risking personnel in the derailment cleanup. This is controversial and cost saving and risks air quality to be sure. Derailments have sometimes caused whole towns to be evacuated. To suggest this is sabotage is not justified. This drama plays out in Canada and the U.S. all too frequently. Stuff malfunctions and the car derails causing the train behind it to derail. I also used to be a carman and this kind of failure is common. The air brake control valve on that car fails to release the brakes when the rest of the train releases just fine. Sabotage would involve a retainer being turned up on that car preventing a release of the brakes. it is a slow news cycle and this event is being being pumped for all it’s worth by people who have no experience in this technology. Dan Bongino is out of his wheel house on this one and so is Dr. Steve Turley. Good God.
 
Whilst Secretary Buttigieg is not responsible for this disaster, that doesn't alter the facts of his incompetence.

If Trump were President, this still would have happened and the media would be blaming him.

Oh wait!

"Legislation was passed under President Obama that made it a legal requirement for trains carrying hazardous flammable materials to have ECP brakes, but this was rescinded in 2017 by the Trump administration."

Fact: ECP brakes on the hazardous chemical cars would not have prevented derailment caused by other cars, not so equipped, in the train.
 
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Does anybody in their right mind right now firmly believe this was a total accident? The government or at least the railroad had to have know that train was carrying tank cars of Vinyl Chloride. Who were the so called experts who approved the burning off of this Vinyl Chloride. Did they not know, or care that the burning off of Vinyl Chloride produces Phosgene Gas? Yes, the same Phosgene Gas used in World War 1 that proved so deadly on biologics.

Where was Norfolk Southern and Pete "Do Not Hump" Buttplug at the town hall meeting last night????? MIA that's where. That takes a lot of balls to throw people under the bus who are begging for help and answers.

We need to stop giving these assholes the benefit of the doubt here. They had to have known that. They had to. Buttplug would have no idea of Phosgene gas from laughing gas, the stupid fuck.

Where has the gov't been to help all these people? We give the migrants 5 star hotels to live in, cell phones, EBT cards, free food, free medical, free transportation and leave our own citizens in the lurch sucking hind teat in Ohio.

Accident? Yeah, just like the Wuhan lab leak was a fucking accident. Sure.
 
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Sounds like Mr. Sevin knows a thing or two. ECP was a hybrid electric pneumatic air brake involving a cable that ran the entire train length enabling an instantaneous brake response instead of an air pressure based command to a purely mechanical brake valve. It also solved the problem of sabotage because a brake pipe blockage would not disable the electric based command for the train to apply brakes and stop. I’m unaware of any of these test trains with this system being other than 100 percent ECP equipment. Maybe Obama’s people weren’t aware that everything would have to be ECP in the train, that it was an all or nothing proposition. It was a brilliant improvement over the ancient WABCO air brakes, which figured prominently in many a train disaster. These days modern trains frequently have locomotives distributed several places throughout the train, supplying air pressure and brake application commands via radio telemetry from the lead locomotive. This is a historic first because now when a trains brakes are released the distributed power locomotives initiate the release along with the lead locomotive, this sometimes seems to be nearly an instantaneous release of the brakes. This derailment train may have had distributed power due to its length, it was 150 cars in length. In spite of who is running the FRA or Mayor Pete, the problem remains that a lot of chemicals are moved by rail. That is not going to change. Try not purchasing your next house near a major railroad main track. The nearest one to me is thirty miles away, which is about right in my estimation.
 
Why was one of the tank cars burned off intentionally? The story is the Governor was told that the tanker would explode due to rising pressure in the tanker fearing shrapnel. What was causing the so called pressure rise? Fire? Put the fire out and contain the spread of toxic chemicals. Do tank cars shatter in a million pieces of shrapnel or do they just split open like other low carbon steel tanks where the leaking chemicals can be contained instead of burning them and releasing tons of toxic fumes into the atmosphere. Do not the tank cars have pressure relief valves?

This story stinks from the beginning. A pillow biting butt blender for TransPO Sec, a total moron affirmative action EPA chief who is telling people to drink the water but refuses a glass of it himself and a phony pResident in the White House who visits the nazis in Ukraine and promises 500 Million more dollars paid for on the credit card but refuses to visit East Palestine.

What more can go wrong? My heart breaks for the poor people of East Palestine who have do deal with our worthless gov't.
 
I agree with you about what a complete mess this whole incident is. I will not get into personalities for lots of reasons, however this falls most heavily on the FRA. Mayor Pete would have gotten an email about this or maybe a phone call. He is not relevant. Tank cars tend to burst and sometimes fly around like rockets. Not very far but it is impressive. Who ever owned that hopper car that caused this, better have a good law firm. That may not have been a NS car at all. The decision to burn off the contents of these cars in my view was purely financial. Railroads today tend to dismantle on site, derailed rolling stock with cutting torches. The old days of putting stuff back on the tracks is pretty much over. I don’t see a China Syndrome type conspiracy here, the FRA has no real blame here and the NTSB will break this down as to the cause. The decision to burn off the contents of these hazardous cars is extremely controversial and I share your outrage. On the other hand I have personally been to these types of cleanup operations in my career and it’s tuff to ask a young firefighter to wade into a situation that may get them killed. My dad was on LSTs and you Navy guys are pretty expert at fire fighting. So I appreciate you know something about this subject. The railroad moves all kinds of commodities without incident 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I’ve personally transported a reactor component for a submarine in a one car train with Navy Seals along riding in a caboose, so all sorts of stuff goes by rail, most of the time without incident. I will close by saying something proactive, if you observe something like over heated wheels on a passing train, call 911. 911 people will talk to the railroad and get the train stopped. You will have saved the day in that instance as a private citizen. If you observe anything that concerns you on a passing train call 911.
 
Tank cars do have pressure relief valves and sometimes in hot weather a tank car will go by emitting a release of it‘s contents due to expansion. There is a very interesting video on YouTube of a derailment caused by a tornado, this derailment was filmed by a windshield camera on the rear locomotive. You will witness in this video how tuff modern tank cars in fact are, because in this video a tank car rides without wheels and therefore no brakes down the middle of the tracks into the rear locomotive at about 30 mph. It does not rupture. Pretty impressive, if it would have ruptured depending on it’s content, it most likely would have killed the train crew.
 
if I recall correctly, the decision to burn off the vinyl chloride was considered a less dangerous option than letting it leak out . . . soak in / pollute / etc / etc.
I'm sure the experts on Twitter had better ideas, tho....
 
@Idaho Living: Your posts are both well written and extremely informative. A railroader for over 40 years!! It shows. It may be true the so called TranspoSec & EPA Sec are indeed irrelevant, but this could have been their moment to step up to the plate and whack that breaking ball out of the park, but instead they struck out on three straight pitches. We had to be good at fighting fires. There is no place to run. o_O

@chowderman: Burning Vinyl Chloride can produce Phosgene gas and possibly and Hydrogen Chloride. Two extremely toxic agents. For example, Phosgene gas was used by the German Army in WW1 with devastating results. I am no expert on Twitter as I am not a member of that place but as someone who has been around for 74 years and seen my share to things I must question the wisdom of trying to contain a large localized spill by potentially creating a poison gas cloud to be carried by the wind to who in hell knows where. What are the long term ramifications of this going to be?
 
OK it’s official I have derailment fatigue. But if any of you are going to forge ahead with this over exposure, the Ohio incident had no fatalities but, the Lac-Megantic rail disaster had plenty. That is an interesting derailment-run away train incident which sent several people involved to prison. It was a hazardous tank car worst case scenario. Take your blood pressure medication before researching that one.
 
T
tommu56 said:
here's anothe point of view who's the major stock holders in main street media and norfolk southern????

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this guy is well spoken and overall it is a decent video, he did include the cctv footage of (four) extremely over heated wheels, not a hot bearing. I’m skeptical the train crew would have put the train in emergency rather than make a normal stop as reported. I have never made other than a normal stop when a wayside detector reports a defect. One thing I take huge exception to that he said, is that it would take dozens of miles to stop this train. That is completely inaccurate, it would have taken about a train length and one half to stop with a service reduction normal stop, it would have stopped more quickly if placed in emergency. The data event recorder on the locomotives will record the type of air brake application used to stop the train. This train did not appear to be going very fast in the cctv footage, I would guess about 30 or so mph. This train would stop in less than it’s own length at that low speed with a service rate normal stop. Each car has brakes and is considered one operative brake, this train had 150 cars, so that’s 150 operative brakes. The total tonnage of the train divided by 150 gives the tons per operative brake. The TPOB didn’t seem all that high given the high number of cars. This guy really went into the weeds suggesting wheel bearing on freight cars are cleaned and repacked like on your Volkswagen in the driveway. Freight car wheel bearings are referred to as journals and are often produced by Timken but can be other manufacturers as well. Wheel bearings on freight cars are run to failure. You read that correctly, when they begin to run hot enough to set off a wayside detector they are replaced. The car would be set out at the nearest adjacent siding and the axel would be changed out at that location by a wheel truck and crew. Train crews are expected to report the axel size which is cast into the bearing cap of the hot journal to the train dispatcher so the correct axel is brought by the wheel truck crew. Modern freight car journals/bearings are grease packed roller bearings. They are pumped with additional grease if the car is being serviced at a facility and the stenciling on the car calls for it. They are never taken apart and cleaned. The entire axel is replaced by a new axel and wheel set to replace a failed journal. Otherwise this you tube guy did OK.
 
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Idaho Living said:
T

this guy is well spoken and overall it is a decent video, he did include the cctv footage of (four) extremely over heated wheels, not a hot bearing. I’m skeptical the train crew would have put the train in emergency rather than make a normal stop as reported. I have never made other than a normal stop when a wayside detector reports a defect. One thing I take huge exception to that he said, is that it would take dozens of miles to stop this train. That is completely inaccurate, it would have taken about a train length and one half to stop with a service reduction normal stop, it would have stopped more quickly if placed in emergency. The data event recorder on the locomotives will record the type of air brake application used to stop the train. This train did not appear to be going very fast in the cctv footage, I would guess about 30 or so mph. This train would stop in less than it’s own length at that low speed with a service rate normal stop. Each car has brakes and is considered one operative brake, this train had 150 cars, so that’s 150 operative brakes. The total tonnage of the train divided by 150 gives the tons per operative brake. The TPOB didn’t seem all that high given the high number of cars. This guy really went into the weeds suggesting wheel bearing on freight cars are cleaned and repacked like on your Volkswagen in the driveway. Freight car wheel bearings are referred to as journals and are often produced by Timken but can be other manufacturers as well. Wheel bearings on freight cars are run to failure. You read that correctly, when they begin to run hot enough to set off a wayside detector they are replaced. The car would be set out at the nearest adjacent siding and the axel would be changed out at that location by a wheel truck and crew. Train crews are expected to report the axel size which is cast into the bearing cap of the hot journal to the train dispatcher so the correct axel is brought by the wheel truck crew. Modern freight car journals/bearings are grease packed roller bearings. They are pumped with additional grease if the car is being serviced at a facility and the stenciling on the car calls for it. They are never taken apart and cleaned. The entire axel is replaced by a new axel and wheel set to replace a failed journal. Otherwise this you tube guy did OK.
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I totally agree with you with some of his maintenance issues.
It's the media / NS not covering it is what I was presenting

With technology and telemetry today I dont understand why hot box or wheel sencers aren on every few miles of track or on each car.
ot comes down to money VS safety.
Just like the proposed 1 operator trains how is that suppose to work raise you hand and ask the boss if you can stop the train to take a dump?? " no just hold it till your next red signal" will be their reply:) or will the next generations of engines be operatable from the "throne"?
 
tommu56 said:
I totally agree with you with some of his maintenance issues.
It's the media / NS not covering it is what I was presenting

With technology and telemetry today I dont understand why hot box or wheel sencers aren on every few miles of track or on each car.
ot comes down to money VS safety.
Just like the proposed 1 operator trains how is that suppose to work raise you hand and ask the boss if you can stop the train to take a dump?? " no just hold it till your next red signal" will be their reply:) or will the next generations of engines be operatable from the "throne"?
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One strength of this video is the explanation he gives about the possible investor pressure to leave this underreported in the media. The engineer only operation you mention, was I believe a factor in the Quebec disaster I refer to in this thread. The short line RR that was involved in the Quebec event was an American company and that train started in the U.S. and terminated in Canada. The FRA granted this short line authorization to run with a single employee under a waiver. I ran trains from the States into Canada myself and laid over there. I was in Canada several time a week. This was my regular run until my retirement in 2017. Ironically the FRA has no jurisdiction in Canada. So this single employee operations must have been separately approved by Transport Canada. Speaking to hot journal detectors. In my experience they are frequently 20 or so miles apart and they have multiple functions these days like having a dragging equipment reporting feature also. These detectors report axel counts and occasionally count more axels than you think you have, meaning you have an orphan or extra car in your train, which is a really big deal to investigate Immediately especially if it’s placarded.
 
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