Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

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joeyuboats
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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by joeyuboats »

Look at the bright side--- NS is becoming the leader at scrapping freight cars.

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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by Chip »

joeyuboats wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 3:21 pm
Look at the bright side--- NS is becoming the leader at scrapping freight cars.
Someone’s gotta do it. For a while about 10 years ago it was CSX.

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David Collins
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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by David Collins »

MrAnderson wrote:
Sun Mar 05, 2023 3:45 pm
David Collins wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 8:03 pm
In my opinion, the FRA needs to shut NS' operations down until they can make new safety practices that the FRA can agree upon, and if the regulator doesn't like it, nothing moves on that railroad until the regulator is satisfied.

Here's why: NS at this point is a threat to public safety with all of these relatively large derailments becoming more and more frequent, and some of these are happening in some relatively large towns/cities. Of course, let's not forget the people getting sick who live in East Palestine and surrounding areas.

This whole bit of corporate incompetence has gone too far, and it's gotten to the point where it's not if, it's when people will start dying because of these derailments. and as of right now, with congrees being the way it is, the only people that can stop it are the folks at the FRA.

Rant over.
This would just send all the traffic to trucks. And I know you know that's worse.
I needed to find a way to respond to all of these comments about this hot take that I made.

I don't care that (if this scenario were to happen) customers would have to move to trucks and deal the railroad a possibly lethal financial blow, these Wall Street Hedgefund guys have no f****** idea what they're doing, my response, short and sweet, Lives > Profit. It's an easy concept.

By the way, me being someone who cares about the environment and being told that "I should join the mainstream media" because I have said that the EPA should whoop NS' ass, not cool. We all have different opinions about the environment, but making fun of someone who cares about it in a case of a disaster like this should just not say anything.

Onwards.

Chip
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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by Chip »

So your solution is to cripple the economy? That ends horribly for everyone, and not just in the US.

What are they teaching in school these days?

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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by chapmaja »

David Collins wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 6:05 pm
MrAnderson wrote:
Sun Mar 05, 2023 3:45 pm
David Collins wrote:
Sat Mar 04, 2023 8:03 pm
In my opinion, the FRA needs to shut NS' operations down until they can make new safety practices that the FRA can agree upon, and if the regulator doesn't like it, nothing moves on that railroad until the regulator is satisfied.

Here's why: NS at this point is a threat to public safety with all of these relatively large derailments becoming more and more frequent, and some of these are happening in some relatively large towns/cities. Of course, let's not forget the people getting sick who live in East Palestine and surrounding areas.

This whole bit of corporate incompetence has gone too far, and it's gotten to the point where it's not if, it's when people will start dying because of these derailments. and as of right now, with congrees being the way it is, the only people that can stop it are the folks at the FRA.

Rant over.
This would just send all the traffic to trucks. And I know you know that's worse.
I needed to find a way to respond to all of these comments about this hot take that I made.

I don't care that (if this scenario were to happen) customers would have to move to trucks and deal the railroad a possibly lethal financial blow, these Wall Street Hedgefund guys have no f****** idea what they're doing, my response, short and sweet, Lives > Profit. It's an easy concept.

By the way, me being someone who cares about the environment and being told that "I should join the mainstream media" because I have said that the EPA should whoop NS' ass, not cool. We all have different opinions about the environment, but making fun of someone who cares about it in a case of a disaster like this should just not say anything.

Onwards.

Now it's time to respond to your response to your post to prove how out of touch with reality some of your ideas are.

"I don't care that (if this scenario were to happen) customers would have to move to trucks"

Who the F%^& is going to drive the trucks? There is already a shortage of truck drivers available to drive the load that need to be driven now. While the shortage has dropped roughly 25% over the last two years, there is still an estimated 64,000 unfilled truck driving positions available nationwide.

How would shutting the railroad and moving the traffic to a less safe mode of transportation be safer? You would risk drivers being forced to drive in even more unsafe conditions (sleep deprived, strung up on uppers to stay awake, ect) in order to attempt to handle the drastically increased load of traffic. I bet you don't even have a clue how much addtional truck traffic we would be talking about if your idea was implemented and NS was shut down.

NS car loadings, for the week ending 3-4-2023 were 130,133. Of those, 44269 were not container, coke or coal traffic. Assuming that all of the container traffic was able to be moved via another railroad, as could the coke and coal traffic, that still means over 44,000 carloads that would need to move by truck each week. If we use the conservative number of 3 truckloads per 1 train car load, we would be looking at a minimum of 132,000 additional truckloads per week that would need to be transported by truck.

Additionally, who is going to pay for moving that material by truck? The answer is every single consumer because the costs will be passed down to us. Contrary to your misguided belief, trucks are not the answer in this situation.

You also talk about being better for the environment? How is moving that traffic better for the environment?

Trains move freight at a much more fuel efficient and less GHG producing manner than trucj traffic does. Additionally, there is a substantially higher risk of a damaging accident for a HAZMAT truck container than there is for a train carrying HAZMAT materials. The question that needs to be asked is if one major disaster (like Ohio), is worse off than a multiude of smaller accidents that leak lower volumes per accident?

As for the EPA's response to this. Yes, I do feel the EPA should require the railroad to clean up the mess at their expense. I however feel that the actual report about WTF caused the accident should be completed before actually penalizing someone. We live in a country where people, and corperations are innocent until PROVEN guilty. Unfortunately to many people, yourself including, like to rule a corperation as guilty, then try to apologize when it turns out, oops, we were wrong.

Until all the facts are determined as to what caused this, and each other accident, and why they happened, it is not fair to pass judgment on any person or corperation. Yes, steps can be taken to address what are known facts.

Also, I seem to hear you and others blowing a lot of smoke about how bad this is and bad NS is, but what I am not hearing much of is solutions that would have been better than what NS felt needed to be done after the derailment with the materials in those cars.

I would suggest you look up the Waverly disaster to see what happens when crews are improperly handling cars containing potentially explosive materials.

Finally, you may want to look at a visual regarding incidents related to transporting hazarous materials, so maybe you can understand it.

https://www.bts.gov/content/hazardous-m ... amage-data

It's even color coded for you.
Last edited by chapmaja on Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

PatAzo
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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by PatAzo »

David there is a dichotomy in your position. On one hand you don't care that hazardous materials would be diverted to trucks and on the other you care about the environment. Take a look at these transportation statistics on hazardous materials incidents and fatalities. https://www.bts.gov/content/hazardous-m ... amage-data Note that all of the fatalities in the past ten years have been highway related (zero rail). Trucks handle twice the hazardous shipment ton miles that rail does with a hazmat related incident rate 35 times greater than rail.

Wall Steet greed will bleed many a good thing into ruin. There is a case for better transportation safety. I would disagree that punishing NS's shareholders by shutting down the railroad is worth the decrease in transportation safety and the economic impact to the average person it would cause.

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R Bedell
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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by R Bedell »

Now it's time to respond to your response to your post to prove how out of touch with reality some of your ideas are.
AMEN !!

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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by Saturnalia »

Also, don’t forget that most stock is held by individuals, or by organizations on behalf of individuals. Retirement plans, pensions, insurance. “F the shareholders” basically means “F me and everybody else” because one way or another virtually everybody is invested in stocks.
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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by ~Z~ »

No, actually no where near virtually everyone owns stock in one way or another. Last I read was approx 60% of people do. Of that, those who earn less, stocks dipping do far else to their wealth than those very well off. Whichever the case, as I said before, shutting down NS is lollerskates for an answer.
Does anyone know if there is actually a safe speed that hazardous tank cars can travel, so that when a derailment happens, that the tank car has virtually no chance of rupturing? GDLK strolls by at 10mph, and I just don't feel like it's going to leak should a derailment happen.

Found a document on the Federal Register stating:
FRA's research demonstrates that the speed at which a train is traveling has the greatest effect on the closing velocity between cars involved in a derailment or other accident situation. Specifically, the research indicates that, in general, the secondary car-to-car impact speed is approximately one-half that of the initial train speed—the speed of the train at the time of the collision or derailment. Limiting the operating speed of tank cars transporting PIH materials is one method to impose a control on the forces experienced by these tank cars.
Sure, it's going to take longer for companies to receive their goods, will likely need to keep more on hand for production, slow down mainlines and possibly shift hazardous cars into separate trains that roll at slower speeds. Put the tankcars on lower used routes to not interfere as much with faster moving freight. All sorts of issues involved in moving freight slower, but if we can move it slowly and dramatically decrease the risk of releases of these chemicals, maybe we can take the hit in cost associated with the slower move. There's a huge difference in long term effects between some loaded centerbeams carrying lumber catching on fire, and a tank car leaking thousands of gallons of chlorine or one with molten phosphorus.
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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by Jetlink »

PatAzo wrote:
Sat Mar 11, 2023 10:52 pm
David there is a dichotomy in your position. On one hand you don't care that hazardous materials would be diverted to trucks and on the other you care about the environment. Take a look at these transportation statistics on hazardous materials incidents and fatalities. https://www.bts.gov/content/hazardous-m ... amage-data Note that all of the fatalities in the past ten years have been highway related (zero rail). Trucks handle twice the hazardous shipment ton miles that rail does with a hazmat related incident rate 35 times greater than rail.

Wall Steet greed will bleed many a good thing into ruin. There is a case for better transportation safety. I would disagree that punishing NS's shareholders by shutting down the railroad is worth the decrease in transportation safety and the economic impact to the average person it would cause.
Well said PatAzo. What a great way of explaining the complex issue of a dichotomy with out personally attacking David Collins. I think we all know that shutting down NS is not really practical nor will it really increase safety. I think we also all agree that what happened is tragedy. No matter what happens afterwards different sides are going to have different ideas of how to handle the aftermath and how to proceed next.
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Re: Derailment in Springfield, OH Today.

Unread post by chapmaja »

~Z~ wrote:
Sun Mar 12, 2023 10:09 am
No, actually no where near virtually everyone owns stock in one way or another. Last I read was approx 60% of people do. Of that, those who earn less, stocks dipping do far else to their wealth than those very well off. Whichever the case, as I said before, shutting down NS is lollerskates for an answer.
Does anyone know if there is actually a safe speed that hazardous tank cars can travel, so that when a derailment happens, that the tank car has virtually no chance of rupturing? GDLK strolls by at 10mph, and I just don't feel like it's going to leak should a derailment happen.

Found a document on the Federal Register stating:
FRA's research demonstrates that the speed at which a train is traveling has the greatest effect on the closing velocity between cars involved in a derailment or other accident situation. Specifically, the research indicates that, in general, the secondary car-to-car impact speed is approximately one-half that of the initial train speed—the speed of the train at the time of the collision or derailment. Limiting the operating speed of tank cars transporting PIH materials is one method to impose a control on the forces experienced by these tank cars.
Sure, it's going to take longer for companies to receive their goods, will likely need to keep more on hand for production, slow down mainlines and possibly shift hazardous cars into separate trains that roll at slower speeds. Put the tankcars on lower used routes to not interfere as much with faster moving freight. All sorts of issues involved in moving freight slower, but if we can move it slowly and dramatically decrease the risk of releases of these chemicals, maybe we can take the hit in cost associated with the slower move. There's a huge difference in long term effects between some loaded centerbeams carrying lumber catching on fire, and a tank car leaking thousands of gallons of chlorine or one with molten phosphorus.
While you may be correct in your 60% number, virtually everyone in this country is in fact impacted by the performance of the stock market in some way, shape or form. Even the poorest of the poor are influenced by the stock market if they don't have the money for even basic needs. How many people in this country rely on social service programs either public or private. Many private organizations that provide social services in this country benefit heavily from trust fund proceeds which regularly come from the performance of the stock market.

Also, per the latest statistics I have found, 71% of employees in his country are impacted by an employer based retirement plan.

Even social security is impacted by the stock market. While the SSA can't put money into the stock market (they would be much better off historically if they could), the money from the social security taxes is impacted by the stock market. The money raised from collecting FICA and Self employment taxes is put into the trust funds (there are two), the money in those funds is then invested into government securities including bonds. There is a relationships between the performance of the bond markets and the performance of the stock market, so virtually every person in this country is in fact impacted by the stock market.

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