SCL
Seaboard Coast Line
This 1985 Carstens Classic is a pictoral history of the Seaboard Coast Line focused on Florida!
Black and yellow SCL locomotives arrived with the 1967 merger of Atlantic Coast Line with the Seaboard Air Line railroad. From phosphates to Florida orange juice, from long passenger runs and special circus moves to a diverse fleet of diesels; You’ll
enjoy 116 pages of quality black and white photography.
Shale Oil, Passengers, and Rail Safety
THE ENTIRE ROUTE toward total U.S. “ener- gy independence” is threatened by questions surrounding oil tanker rail cars — whether we can afford them and to what extent they are suited for safely transporting the new shale oil. Four recent crude oil rail accidents have prompted calls for action on safety. The four are in the town of Lac-Mégantic, Québec, in July; Alabama in November; North Dakota in late December; and the lat- est being a derailment in Eastern Canada where 17 burning tank cars forced the evac- uation of 150 residents of Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, 28 miles from the Maine border. Safety: The Québec derailment of a run-
away train that killed 47 prompted two Sen- ate committee chairmen to urge the Obama administration to get involved and take “prompt and decisive” action. Senators Jay Rockefeller (
D-W.Va.) and Ron Wyden (D- Ore.) called for an investigation, and raised some questions as to whether federal tank regulations are adequate. The runaway train all but wiped out the town of Lac-Mé- gantic near Montréal. The tragedy on the Montréal, Maine & Atlantic Railway was ex- tensively covered in this space. So, too, was the train from North Dakota that exploded in Alabama, causing no fatal- ities but resulting in the release of some 749,000 gallons of oil from 26 tank cars. A more recent derailment of a westbound 106-car train near Casselton, N.D., led to a monstrous fireball explosion that caused the evacuation of most of the town’s 2400 resi- dents for about 24 hours. The derailment of a grain-carrying train affected an eastbound train carrying crude oil from the state’s oil patch which collided with derailed cars from the grain train. The result was a second de- railment that caused several oil tankers to ignite.
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In early January — a few days later — North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple met with BNSF CEO Matt Rose to discuss the Casselton derailment and ways to enhance safety of crude oil shipments in the state. The governor raised questions about BNSF’s safety protocols on hazmat trains passing one another, especially in populated areas. The Time Issue: The AP cites figures showing that 78,000 of the 92,000 tank cars in the U.S. carrying oil and other flammable liquids were built under old procedures that have since been deemed inadequate. The As- sociated Press cites bureaucratic rule-mak- ing as a cause of the snail-paced failure to complete the retrofitting process of the older cars over a 13-year period. The Cost Issue: Although the railroad industry in November endorsed putting the retrofits in place “as swiftly and aggressive- ly as possible,” according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the oil indus- try (the American Petroleum Institute) balks at an estimated $1 billion price tag. The recent rail accidents have put railroad oil tank cars under microscopic scrutiny. In Washington, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is currently considering new rules requiring tank cars to
be built to tougher standards and/or to be retrofitted in order to prevent them from rupturing in the event of a derailment. The federal DOT has now warned that the high grade crude from the Bakken fields may be more flammable than the plain old pre-fracking oil that we have dealt with pri- marily until recent times. Witnesses have said that in these recent crashes oil has ex- ploded. Look for the “volatility issue” to as- sume a role in upcoming debates. The Unsolvable Problem?: Perhaps the most intractable ingredient in this series of smashups concerns the unaffordable insur- ance that would be required to shield the in- dustry from over-the-top liabilities incurred in a “worst case scenario.”
“There is not currently enough available [insurance] coverage in the commercial insur- ance market anywhere in the world to cover the worst case scenario,” according to James Beardsley, global practice leader for the insur- ance unit of Marsh and McLennan, Inc. The limit or ceiling is about $1.5 billion coverage available for any of the big North American railroads. A “worst case scenario” would cost multiple times that amount. Think Lac-Mégantic is as bad as it can get? No way. E. Hunter Harrison, CEO at Cana- dian Pacific (and before that, of competitor Canadian National) told The Wall Street Journal that “your worst nightmare is sabo- tage in a train carrying a toxic substance in a heavily-populated area. The estimates of lives and the damage — I don’t even want to repeat what it would be.” Finger-Pointing: Diffusing or fragment- ing some of the responsibility is the fact that railroads themselves do not control an en- tire train. They own the locomotives and the track. Most of the oil cars are owned by ship- pers and other customers, as well as tank car companies. The railroads, in fact, have been urging regulators to lean on shippers and the owners of the tank cars to make cer- tain that rules — especially those involving safety — are followed. Much of the nation’s hazmat traffic ends up on railroads because railroads are re- quired by law to carry some of the hazmat cargo that truckers and barges can reject. That in turn means the relationship be- tween railroads and some of their more risky customers have at times been rather dicey. Norfolk-Southern CEO Charles W. “Wick” Moorman told the WSJ that “every time we pick up a carload of chlorine, we’re placing a bet on the company.” In North Dakota: Political repercus- sions are manifesting themselves in one of the states where much of the increased oil drilling is taking place, much to the benefit of that state’s economy. (North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the entire nation.) The state’s Bakken shale oil field yields a million barrels a day. As noted above, there already are double-downed ef- forts to retrofit older cars and/or speed up the timetable for the manufacture and im- plementation of new improved equipment. However, such a schedule could, according to
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