Has anyone seen a good analysis on what went wrong? I found a USAToday article with a partial fragment saying that one of the wheels had a failed bearing, and this was the proximal cause of the derailment. It seems to me that (as pointed out in the article) the mean-time-to-failure increases with the length of the train; perhaps nonlinearly? I think the failure rate of bearings is proportional to the length of the tr…
From what I read the NTSB has not started its investigation because their are waiting for the train cars to finish being cleaned up. After that they will begin and we'll get some preliminary findings and eventually final report
what kind of protections does bankruptcy afford Norfolk Southern or other corp shenanigans can they pull to avoid having to do anything?
Well, they could spin off a new company that owns the liability. That sometimes works, although notably courts did not allow Johnson & Johnson to get away with something similar recently. Details https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123567606/johnson-baby-powde... Rejection https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/30/business/johnson-and-johnson-...
> Before the bankruptcy filing, J&J faced costs from $3.5 billion in verdicts and settlements, including one in which 22 women were awarded a judgment of more than $2 billion, according to bankruptcy court records.
Around the same time as the LTL shenanigans, on 2022-09-14 J&J announced a $5billion stock buyback[0]. It's not that J&J didn't have the money which led them to do the "Texas two-step" and push liability to their soon-to-declare-bankruptcy LTL subsidiary. They just wanted to line their pockets with the money instead. Isn't that pleasant.
Has anyone seen a good analysis on what went wrong? I found a USAToday article with a partial fragment saying that one of the wheels had a failed bearing, and this was the proximal cause of the derailment. It seems to me that (as pointed out in the article) the mean-time-to-failure increases with the length of the train; perhaps nonlinearly? I think the failure rate of bearings is proportional to the length of the tr…
There are thousands of derailments every year. The bigger problem is not the derailment but the fact that they released and burned off the vinyl chloride in order to expeditiously clear the tracks and get them running again, at great health and environmental cost to the local community and even several states in the windshed to the northeast (PA, NY, VT)
They burned off the vinyl chloride because the combustion products are relatively benign, it was much safer to remediation personnel to ignite the chemicals in a controlled burn vs having them work around flammable chemicals for weeks, vinyl chloride is quite volatile and acute exposure to high concentrations of vinyl chloride vapor is dangerous, and they wanted to get everyone back in their homes (and yes, get the railroad back up and running) as quickly as safely permissible.
Well, yes. But there was also several tank cars of acrylic ester that were breached and whose contents are now on the way into the groundwater. Anyone whose water is from a private well is not to be envied.
Are you talking about Ethylhexyl acrylate? Not very toxic outside of high dose acute exposures.
> Not very toxic outside of high dose acute exposures
A big reason Amtrak is so shit is due to private rail industry taking priority on our shitty track infrastructure.
It used to be any railroad that wanted to carry US Mail, so all of them, was required to hitch at least one passenger car onto their trains. The railroad executives insisted that this was so burdensome it would put them out of business so the law was changed. But before that change you could take a train to literally anywhere in the USA where freight trains go, which is basically everywhere including many small towns.
E.B. White wrote a marvelous essay on the subject called The Railroad.
I'd like to see the head of the EPA, the transportation secretary, the executive team at NS, and anybody in the Biden administration who was involved in blocking the rail workers from striking move into East Palestine and live there, with their children. Don't want to do that because it isn't safe? Then buy these people all new homes. We can start the bidding at $1M per household. I cannot overstate the fury that I f…
Name a country with good rail that hasn't nationalized it (hint, you can't).
Japan privatized their railway in the early 90s. It's really good. This is not an endorsement of privatization just a counterpoint to the argument of national vs privatized transport systems. What it means is leadership and management has to be truly held accountable.
There are thousands of derailments every year. The bigger problem is not the derailment but the fact that they released and burned off the vinyl chloride in order to expeditiously clear the tracks and get them running again, at great health and environmental cost to the local community and even several states in the windshed to the northeast (PA, NY, VT)
They burned off the vinyl chloride because the combustion products are relatively benign, it was much safer to remediation personnel to ignite the chemicals in a controlled burn vs having them work around flammable chemicals for weeks, vinyl chloride is quite volatile and acute exposure to high concentrations of vinyl chloride vapor is dangerous, and they wanted to get everyone back in their homes (and yes, get the r…
>the combustion products are relatively benign
Who told you that? Phosgene and dioxins are "relatively benign"? Dioxins might more properly be called forever chemicals, and will contaminate the soil and water of five states for decades.
I understand they were trying to avoid a bleve. The solution they chose was not based principally on minimizing citizen harm though
Well, yes. But there was also several tank cars of acrylic ester that were breached and whose contents are now on the way into the groundwater. Anyone whose water is from a private well is not to be envied.
Are you talking about Ethylhexyl acrylate? Not very toxic outside of high dose acute exposures.
Surely you would volunteer to drink low doses in all your drinking water for the rest of your life then?