More than likely it's crude oil. There has been a massive (and controversial) increase in the shipment of oil by rail, with some high-profile tragic incidents in the press. A lot of it is from the North Dakota Bakken oilfield area, which has little pipeline infrastructure to transport crude.

You might see a "buffer car" like a hopper or box behind the lead locomotive, and maybe more scattered throughout the train and behind any mid-train and train-end locomotives.

Thanks. I was wondering if any may contain chemicals used in the fracking process in the northern counties of Wyoming, Susquehanna and Bradford. 

Interesting moniker, I was splitting and stacking firewood this morning!

Don

Not to get too political, here, but i understand that you can thank the Pres. for the increase in tank car traffic.  His not wanting to agree to the keystone Pipeline has driven the oil producers to tank cars, big time.   The oil is coming out of the ground;  it has to be moved, somehow.

 

Paul Fischer

Paul, the Keystone Pipeline would help bring crude down to Texas from the Dakotas.  It would have absolutely no effect on all the East/West oil traffic going through the country.

 

Stuart

 

 

If nothing else, that's good for the railroads. Coal traffic has diminished but oil traffic has increased enough to make up for the lost revenue. 

 

BTW, DCRX is not a registered mark according to FindUS.Rail. UTLX is the parent mark for Union Tank Car company, a private car line. 

The pipeline is for Canadian oil. After the construction jobs are over, not much benefit for us.

There are essentially no "chemicals" used in the hydraulic tracking process. Waste water, obtained on site, mixed with find sand (much of which comes out of Texas, I believe), is pumped under extremely high pressure deep underground.

True, the Keystone is planned for Canadian heavy oil. The Bakken field product, further to the east, is pretty much all rail-hauled. A lot of North/South crude-by-rail goes to pipeline and storage terminals in Oklahoma, like Stroud and Cushing, I believe.

 

The flow to the East that you saw in your travels, will probably be to area refineries and transfer to barge and ship.

Google "hydraulic fracturing chemicals" if you think there are no chemicals used. One list has 750 on it.

I suppose they just use plain old water?

Rest assured, there are a host of chemicals used with the water and sand. These chemicals are top secret, and this is one of the biggest concerns here in PA for both first responders and folks living in the communities who have no idea what is in this toxic cocktail being pumped into the ground. 

Don

It actually starts in Alberta, Canada, helping the Canadians, and runs down from there. Also, contrary to what many uninformed Americans think, it would have absolutely no effect whatsoever on the price of petroleum products in the U.S.

It is possible that most of those tank cars you saw were in storage on READING & NORTHERN RR. These cars are not currently acceptable for crude oil shipments by rail/CBR.

 

The towns you mentioned are along R&N tracks.

 

Walter M. Matuch

frac fluids are mostly water and sand, the other chemicals are in small amounts. The chemical used to make frac fluids thick is a gum gar.  Not all frac jobs use water, you can frac with gelled crude oil, liquid CO2, gelled HCL acid and N2 gas.  The types of rock that you are to frac will tale you the type for frac that you need for that well production zone.  I have frac'd approx. 100 wells in the 30 years I worked in the oil/gas field. Did not have problems with most of the wells frac'd, the problems were on the surface and not down hole.  The small amount of damage due to small spills was very small conpaired to the salt water spills and the storage of crude oil in earth pits in the 1900's to 1940's.  You have to look hard to find any of the damage from old saltwater and oil spills from that early times in the oil fields today.

 

I have no problems with shipping oil in tank cars or pipelines. They are safer than beening in large city at night.

You live in the wrong city. 

Not all, perhaps, but most frac jobs by far use water.

 

"Water is by far the largest component of fracking fluids. According to driller Chesapeake Energy, an initial drilling operation itself may consume from 6,000 to 600,000 US gallons of fracking fluids, but over its lifetime an average well may require up to an additional 5 million gallons of water for full operation and possible restimulation frac jobs."

 

One of the fracking by-products now found to be of major concern: release of significant amounts of methane gas, a potent greenhouse gas. Pound for pound, the comparative impact of CH4 on climate change is over 20 times greater than CO2. 

TANKS-A-LOT for sharing

DCRX stands for Deadwood Central Railroad Company.

Larry

Don,  We were in the Lancaster area too this past wednesday and saw them off route 222 on the Reading and Blue Mountain line.  100's of them all over the place.  My friend asked me about them and I said I had no idea why there would be that many in one area.

I am seeing many more long tank trains in the Harrisburg,PA area than I remember. The local TV media is on their expose of these "Bomb Trains" and the local politicians are "getting concerned". 

If you read the diamond shaped red & white placard on 1 of the four sides of the tanker, it will tell you what's in it. example 1203 or 1204 is gasoline, 1987 is ethanol, 1993 is fuel oil or diesel fuel, 1087 is propane or natural gas. you can also google the un or na number to find out what chemical is being hauled. If there are no placards then its empty, or new construction, or a recent washout.

Or if it has no HAZMAT placard it's just not carrying HAZMAT.  Could be carrying a non hazardous cargo, the lack of a placard does not mean empty

The hazmat tankers that are being talked about here are for hazmat only..food cannot be hauled in them, so no placard doesn't mean it has food or other non-hazard products.  

I ran in the speeder run there this weekend. there are almost 1000 empty cars there just in storage. 1267 was on the placards.

 

 

yes they are the newly built tankers being built for hauling crude.

The problem with N. Dakota crude, specifically, is that the drillers have convinced the state not to require the stabilization of the crude before transport (that may have changed 1 April).  Most other producing states do require stabilization, which separates out the lightest and most volatile fractions.

 

Many pipeline operators will not transport unstabilized crude either because the gas pockets and bubbles that will form don't mix well with the pumps that are designed for liquids.

 

The fact that railroads have agreed to transport unstabilized crude puts the onus on them to do it safely.

I see cars on the siding in Alexandrea VA. with a 1170 tag on it, I believe it is ethenal. It can go boom too. They have a lead car on both ends of the train. If one of the commuter trains wacks one of those, O' boy!

Seems highly unlikely, unless the loaded cars a parked directly next to a mainline track with commuter/passenger trains, and one of the passenger trains derailed into the tank cars.

 I'm wondering if the Placards are turned for empty tanks cars. The same placard but turned to the other side.  Some empty tanks are just as dangerous as loaded cars.

 

 

Greg:

Any regulated commodity requiring a placard must display the same placard whether the car is loaded or a "residue" empty.  Once a hazmat car has been cleaned and is no longer considered residue, the placards must be removed.

Curt

Hi Curt,  You're absolutely correct, no more turning of Placards

 

.Unless a emergency crew has a consist list of the  train .. they don't know for sure whether the car is loaded or partially  loaded . (empty). Thx. 

The area is where the NS and CSX transfer cars, it is the only thing remaining from the old Potomac yards, it is two to three tracks wide and the main runs beside it. The tank cars can number from 40 to 100 cars long. I was riding the VRE yesterday and there was one track between our train and the beginning of the tank cars. on the other side of the tank cars run the Metro subway cars which at best has a bad safety record. 

So you have Subway cars, Amtrak, and the VRE. There are some good thing around this. Amtrak and VRE do not move very fast around this area however Metro does not take it slow at all here. The track is in great condition however there are many switches in this area.

Highly unlikely maybe, but not impossible at all.