Category Archives: Rail inspection

Oil Industry, Rail inspection, Rail Safety, Railroad workers, State regulation, Track maintenance

N.D. hires BNSF manager as inspector for state rail safety program

Repost from the Billings Gazette

N.D. hires BNSF manager as inspector for state rail safety program

By Mike Nowatzki, Forum News Service, August 10, 2015
Train derailment
Oil tank cars not damaged in a train derailment near Culbertson are removed from the area on July 17, 2015. Amy Dalrymple/Forum News Service

BISMARCK, N.D. – A manager for the railroad involved in two fiery oil train derailments in North Dakota during the past two years has been hired as the first track inspector for a new state-run rail safety program.

Karl Carson will go to work for the state Public Service Commission on Aug. 17, doing inspections to identify problems with track and worker safety.

A Minot native, Carson is a division engineer with BNSF Railway. He’s worked for the railroad since 1992, holding several positions including assistant director of maintenance production, in which he supervised maintenance and replacement of track and track components, according to the PSC. He’s worked in management for BNSF since 2004.

Commission chairwoman Julie Fedorchak said the PSC wanted an inspector with experience, and with only two major railroads operating in the state – BNSF and Canadian Pacific – hiring someone with connections to one of them was “just an unavoidable situation.”

She said she asked Carson during his interview “if he would have a hard time regulating his old friends, and he said, ‘Absolutely not.’”

“His experience helps him to understand where the strengths and the weaknesses are and will really help him engage directly with the railroad,” she said. “They know his experience and they know he knows what he’s talking about.”

North Dakota is the 31st state to partner with the Federal Railroad Administration on a state rail safety program. The FRA has primary responsibility for rail safety in every state.

The PSC began looking seriously at the need for a state program after the December 2013 derailment of a BNSF oil tanker train near Casselton, which caused a massive fireball and voluntary evacuation of the city. Six cars from a BNSF oil train derailed May 6 near Heimdal in east-central North Dakota. No one was hurt in either incident.

Carson’s new position is one of two approved by state lawmakers in April when they voted to spend $523,345 on the state rail safety program in 2015-17, with the intent of continuing the pilot program in 2017-19.

“We’re quite pleased with the caliber of the first inspector,” Fedorchak said. “He’s got more rail experience than I had hoped for, and I think in talking with other states, that was the key ingredient they emphasized.”

State Sen. Tyler Axness, D-Fargo, who first publicly suggested a state-run rail safety program in July 2014 during his unsuccessful campaign for the PSC, said he doesn’t necessarily disagree with Fedorchak that the pool of qualified applicants for the inspector job is probably limited in North Dakota, and he declined to make any judgments about the hire without seeing the pool of applicants.

But Axness and Wayde Schafer, conservation organizer for the Dacotah Chapter of the Sierra Club, both said it seems like the state has a pattern of hiring regulators with close ties to the industries they will oversee. Schafer said on such a contentious issue as rail safety, “it seems like they would want to hire somebody who was a little bit more neutral.”

“You’d think something this controversial, even the appearance of impropriety should be avoided whenever possible,” he said.

Don Morrison, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council, drew a comparison to the hiring of Lynn Helms, a former employee of Texaco and what is now Hess Corp. who now regulates and promotes the state’s oil and gas industry as director of the state Department of Mineral Resources.

“It certainly looks like business as usual, which is give the industry what they want,” he said. “Time will tell.”

Fedorchak said the PSC had 18 applicants for the job and interviewed the top five, with second interviews for the two finalists. She noted Carson was the “strong favorite” among the FRA inspectors on the interview panel.

Carson earned a certificate of completion in auto mechanics from Bismarck State College in 1990 and also served in the North Dakota Army National Guard from 1990 to 1994. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

His annual salary with the PSC will be $90,000.

Bridge safety, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Rail infrastructure, Rail inspection

Sen. Bob Casey calls for more funding for railroad bridges

Repost from The Herald, Sharon PA

Casey calls for more funding for railroad bridges

By John Finnerty, CNHI Harrisburg, August 7, 2015 7:38 am

HARRISBURG – The federal government must step up oversight of railroad bridges as hundreds of trains carrying explosive crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota cross the state each week, said U.S. Sen. Bob Casey.

Casey, a Democrat and the state’s senior senator, has repeatedly criticized the government’s regulation of railroads in light of derailments and explosions involving crude oil.

Pennsylvania has more than 900 bridges that carry trains over highways, Casey said. The Federal Railroad Administration has just one inspector to check those bridges.

Under a 2010 Federal Railroad Administration rule, railroads must check each bridge at least once a year. At the time that rule was adopted, the government estimated there were 100,000 railroad bridges in the United States.

Railroads face fines of $100,000 for failing to comply with inspection rules.

But short-staffing at the railroad administration means the agency is in no position to ensure that railroads comply, Casey said.

“This lack of oversight could cause gaps in our rail safety system and creates an environment where hundreds of unsafe bridges could be in daily use without proper federal oversight,” he said in a written statement. “It’s time to put more cops on the beat by hiring more rail inspectors. With the risks that our communities face only increasing, the FRA needs to put this process into overdrive.”

Before the Bakken region’s tracking boom, railroads carried about 9,500 cars of crude oil a year. This year they’re on track to top a half-million, according to the American Association of Railroads.

That includes trains that carry at least 60 to 70 million gallons of crude oil across Pennsylvania each week.

Crude By Rail, Derailment, Fire, Human error, Rail infrastructure, Rail inspection

To boost the safety of moving oil by rail, focus on the tracks, paper argues

Repost from the Houston Chronicle

To boost the safety of moving oil by rail, focus on the tracks, paper argues

Infrastructure report says broken rails and human error are also problems as shipments of crude increase

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy, August 6, 2015
A train hauls crude oil in Seattle last month. Railroads and regulators can leverage technology to make existing inspection programs more efficient and effective, says a white paper by the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure.on Wednesday, July 15, 2015. The highly controversial trains haul rail cars loaded with oil brought from the oil fields of North Dakota and Montana. (Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com) Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO / SEATTLEPI.COM
A train hauls crude oil in Seattle last month. Railroads and regulators can leverage technology to make existing inspection programs more efficient and effective, says a white paper by the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure.on Wednesday, July 15, 2015. The highly controversial trains haul rail cars loaded with oil brought from the oil fields of North Dakota and Montana. (Joshua Trujillo, seattlepi.com) Photo: JOSHUA TRUJILLO / SEATTLEPI.COM

WASHINGTON – More can be done to boost the safety of moving oil by rail by focusing on the tracks themselves, according to a white paper released Thursday by a group promoting infrastructure investments.

New rules requiring more resilient tank cars are an important step, the Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure said, but regulators, railroads and shippers now need to do more to combat the leading cause of derailments, including broken rails and human error.

From integrity sensors to measurement systems, an array of technologies can help ensure tracks are sound, said Brigham McCown, chairman of the alliance and a former head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

‘Proactive engagement’

“We tend to be reactionary. Something happened, so what are we going to do to fix it?” McCown told reporters Thursday. “We focus on the accident, rather than focusing on a long-term proactive engagement of reducing the potential for accidents to begin with.”

The issue has drawn attention amid a surge in oil-by-rail traffic. As trains carry crude across the United States to refineries and ports, there has also been a series of fiery derailments involving tank cars carrying that hazardous material.

Over 22 pages, the alliance’s white paper makes the case that railroads and regulators can leverage technology to make existing inspection programs more efficient and effective.

Existing regulations, updated in 2014, already mandate both track and rail inspections – the former often entails workers examining the physical conditions of track structures and the roadbed by foot or by vehicle, with that monitoring required as frequently as weekly in some cases. Rail inspections use ultrasonic or induction testing to identify hidden internal defects, with their timing generally pegged to the amount of traffic on rail segments.

The Federal Railroad Administration also requires other probes, including monthly inspections of switches, turnouts, track crossings and other devices.

Constant inspections

Many railroads go above and beyond those inspection requirements.

“Freight railroads spend billions of dollars every year on maintaining and further modernizing the nation’s rail network, including safety enhancing rail infrastructure and equipment,” said Ed Greenberg, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads. “At any point during the day or night, the nation’s rail network is being inspected, maintained or being upgraded.”

But the infrastructure alliance reiterates a previous assertion by the National Transportation Safety Board, that track inspections are undermined when a single worker can inspect multiple lines at the same time, as currently allowed.

And McCown emphasized that existing technology can boost the odds of catching broken rails and other problems before an accident.

AMTRAK, Bakken Crude, Broken wheel, Clean-up, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Oil conditioning, Oil spill, Rail infrastructure, Rail inspection, Soil contamination

Montana county has had 5 derailments in two years

Repost from The Dickinson Press

Montana county has had 5 derailments in two years

By Amy Dalrymple on Jul 20, 2015 at 11:22 p.m.
An investigator takes photos at the site of a crude oil train derailment on Saturday, July 18 east of Culbertson, Mont. Twenty-two oil tankers derailed, leaking an estimated 35,000 gallons of oil. (FNS Photo by Amy Dalrymple)

CULBERTSON, Mont. — Five train derailments have occurred in less than two years in the northeastern Montana County where crews continue cleaning up after last week’s oil train derailment.

In addition to the two train derailments that occurred last week within a 20-mile stretch of Roosevelt County, two railcars also derailed at Culbertson in February, according to the Federal Railroad Administration database, which is updated through April.

The cause of that incident, which did not cause injuries or release of hazardous material, was attributed to human error, according to information submitted to the FRA.

The area also had two train derailments in 2014, including the derailment of two Amtrak cars in April of that year in the neighboring community of Bainville.

Two people were hurt in the derailment, which caused more than $100,000 in damage to Amtrak equipment and nearly $500,000 in damage to the track, the FRA database shows.

The cause that derailment is listed as “track roadbed settled or soft,” according to information submitted to the FRA.

The other 2014 incident, which involved one railcar that derailed in December at Culbertson, was attributed to a broken wheel, the FRA database shows.

The entire state of Montana had 19 train derailments in 2014, the FRA information shows.

Last Tuesday, nine railcars derailed near Blair, Mont., damaging about 1 mile of track. The cause remains under investigation.

BNSF Railway inspects the track in that area at least four times per week, spokesman Matt Jones said.

The FRA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration continued collecting evidence Monday to investigate the cause of Thursday’s derailment involving 22 oil tankers. Four of the derailed tank cars leaked oil, the FRA said, and spilled an estimated 35,000 gallons of oil.

The train was not speeding at the time it derailed, an FRA spokesman said. It was traveling 44 miles per hour in a 45-mph zone, the spokesman said.

BNSF environmental specialists continue to clean up at the site. Oil will be removed from the remaining tank cars in the next several days, and the cars will be removed after that, Jones said.

Crews are excavating contaminated soil, said Daniel Kenney, enforcement specialist with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, which is monitoring the cleanup. The spill was not reported to have contaminated any water sources and has not threatened human health, Kenney said.

The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources confirmed Monday that Statoil, the company that owns the oil that was on the train, is in compliance with the state’s oil conditioning order.

The order, which took effect in April, aims to reduce the volatility of Bakken crude oil.

Statoil was meeting the order by operating its equipment at specific temperatures and pressures, said Department of Mineral Resources spokeswoman Alison Ritter. Companies also can comply by submitting vapor pressure tests to the state.

The train with was loaded by Savage Services in Trenton, N.D., and headed to Anacortes, Wash., the FRA said.

Jeff Hymas, a spokesman for Savage Services, said Monday the railcar inspection protocols at the Trenton terminal are consistent with FRA and BNSF requirements.