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On April 18, 2018, at approximately 1:23 a.m., CST, a local Union Pacific Railroad Company (UP) freight train, symbol MFWMH-15, with 5 lead locomotives and 17 of the original 114 rail cars remaining in the train, derailed a single rail car in yard track 108 at Milepost (MP) 609.43 on UP’s Toyah...
This report describes a novel and objective methodology for quantifying and characterizing how changes to tank car designs or the tank car operating environment lead to reductions in risk (or reductions in puncture probabilities). The methodology captures several parameters that are relevant to...
A series of seven fully-engulfing fire tests were conducted by Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und –prüfung (BAM) personnel on one-third scale test tanks to evaluate the capacity of rail tank cars carrying hazardous caustic materials, such as sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or potassium hydroxide (KOH...
A tiered emission factors table was developed by Argonne National Laboratory to populate its Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET®) model for pollutants emissions, as well as to calculate energy intensities for passenger and freight rail applications. The...
On April 7, 2018, at approximately 6:08 a.m., MDT, westbound BNSF Railway (BNSF) loaded unit grain
train G-DRATAC-9-05H derailed 30 loaded covered hopper cars. The derailed cars were in train consist
positions 72 through 101. The train was operating at a recorded speed of 52 mph at the time of...