I doubt it will be in the billions, but NS is going to take a big hit any way you slice it. As they should.

The tax payers will bear a bunch of the expense, too.

Oh I totally understand that a similarly perfect storm could happen at any railroad. It’s just the NS has long standing notoriety as the most assholish of RRs to work for. They used to require their operating employees to shit in serial numbered bags that would turned in at the end of their tour of duty because equipping their locomotives with toilets was deemed too big of an expense. That’s the kind of mentality that they have a reputation for.

Cool.  

I've been the guy asking folks like you to show up and pickup many times.  When I worked in the semiconductor industry haz waste shipping and disposal was a fun part of my job but hell, I did plenty of it from a brewery too.

Dafuq?

How about motive power they acquired from other roads?

There's an old saw that you always shit in the trailing power unit's head, but no facilities whatsoever?

Instead of a toilet, they had a rudimentary frame that the issued bag could be attached to.

I saw this posted on a train forum today. Assume it is brand new

I assume the vandal is referring to specific dates. Was there any speculation as to their significance?

It's Ukraine related.  Can't translate it but it is something in english/cyrillic.  The dates are independence for for Ukraine, the little green men invasion and last years "military action".  It popped up on the anniversary day of the war.

Attached File

Oops... On my phone I thought it said 2023, and was a reference to East Palestine... sorry!

Nah it's all good you aren't the only one.  Been in my feed from various railsites on FB since about the day after the anniversary on the 25th and then miraculously was picked up yesterday being pushed by the death and destruction pimps to pushing the agenda.  Kind of funny actually that they fail to see their failure.

That would be my guess, yes.

I've seen panicky statements from normally conservative people around here, making hay about the local towns this train passed through. These particular conservatives are also prone to believing a whole lot of conspiracy type stuff, though, so I'm not completely surprised. Some of them HAVE mentioned acid rain locally in the past weeks and I found it as implausible then as I do now.  I was actually going to look up the recent wind patterns so I could see if there's any remote chance of this being legitimate but, honestly, I know it's very unlikely without looking and I'm convinced enough of that where I can't see to point in spending the time.

I've stopped short of shooting back with, "Fucker, it passed 70 yards from my front door. You don't see me panicking..."

A couple of days after the controlled burn, I noticed a film of something on our cars.

Mind you I'm 35min west of East Palestine - at motorcycle speeds. An hour and a half for the rest of you who drive like a sane person would.

I'd also seen reports of same around the Canton area. Given the winds have been zonal through the period in question, it wasn't anything from the burn.

I tried explaining this to people who were upwind of the event and who noticed the deposits. Apparently everything is now tanker related, rather than being connected to natural processes...like dust storms.

People are going to lose their fucking minds in a couple weeks when all this strange yellow powder starts accumulating on everything.

I’m 21 miles by air at my house from the accident.

And it’s just like… people have 0 understanding.  My neighbor was even asking me about the chemicals and if our water is safe (well water.)

Just like holy shit… yeah it was a bad accident. But it’s not going to contaminate ~100sq miles.

All the rain we’ve received, let alone the drenching we got yesterday.  0.714 inches of rain at the airport… I’m guessing a little more the further south you went. And we’re expecting 0.1+ inches more today. So nearly an inch in 24 hours.  

So assuming the wreck contaminated 1 square mile. Approximately 17.3 million gallons of water have fallen on it in the last 24 hours. Let alone what we’ve previously had in the last ~25 days or so.

Since the accident, the area has had approximately 1.825 inches of rain. (Estimated February total, plus what is coming today.) So we’ve had approximately ~31,700,000 gallons fall per square mile, of rain.

Even if 0 of the product was burned off in the accident (which we know at least some was.) There was ~115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride. And approximately ~200,000 gallons of over all liquid products spilled, supposedly.

It’s now washed into tens of millions of gallons of water.  They cleaned up the localized area.  Let alone getting into any water shed that is going to further dilute it with millions of more gallons of water…

21 miles, hope you're ok!?!
Are your trucks ok?

I really hope you're $250k trucks are ok!

When you get a chance please tell me more about the weather patterns and the enormous amount of rain, and all the weather patterns; it's good to have a meteorologist (obviously youre a meteorologist) and your trucks!!

Thank you!

I’m in the oil business.  The rain was just pulled off weather reports for Youngstown region.  WKBN.  

My trucks are good.  They were inside Nulfco.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/wayside-detectors-in-spotlight-after-norfolk-southern-derailment-in-ohio/

"Norfolk Southern is inspecting all of its nearly 1,000 wayside hotbox detectors in the wake of the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that safety investigators say was caused by a wheel bearing failure.

NS also has confirmed that detectors in the East Palestine area were all operating properly when merchandise train 32N rolled past them prior to the 8:54 p.m. derailment.

“Under the supervision of the Federal Railroad Administration, the company has inspected all wayside detectors in the area of the incident and found they were operating as designed,” NS said. “Out of an abundance of caution, Norfolk Southern is now inspecting all of the nearly 1,000 wayside heat detectors on its system — on top of the regular inspection of the detectors every 30 days.”

CSX Transportation has completed a week-long inspection and calibration of its network of more than 1,000 wayside detectors as a precaution.

The Federal Railroad Administration has not issued a safety advisory regarding hotbox detectors after the NS wreck, which spilled toxic chemicals, forced the evacuation of East Palestine, and prompted a firestorm of criticism of NS and the other Class I railroads.

The National Transportation Safety Board said today in a preliminary report that the derailment was caused by a wheel bearing failure. Two hotbox detectors recorded rising temperatures on the suspect hopper car, but temperatures never reached the critical threshold that would have tripped an alarm and required the crew to stop the train until after the train passed a third hotbox detector moments before the derailment.

CSX Chief Operating Officer Jamie Boychuk ordered the systemwide testing on his railroad. “We decided to do this as an extraordinary measure,” CSX spokeswoman Cindy Schild says.

Normally, CSX’s wayside detectors are inspected every two weeks but are not necessarily calibrated during those inspections, she says.

FRA does not regulate the trackside detectors that can warn of hot axles, dragging equipment, or other defects. They’re generally spaced between 10 and 20 miles apart on main lines.

It was not immediately clear if the other big railroads have or will conduct more thorough inspections of their detector networks.

“Union Pacific is closely monitoring the NTSB investigation and reviewing its preliminary findings. We constantly evaluate our processes and the Ohio derailment offers Union Pacific and the entire industry a chance to learn and continue working together to further improve safety,” spokeswoman Robynn Tysver says.

BNSF Railway said its detectors are inspected regularly. “Our wayside detectors are inspected frequently by our signal team as part of our robust, extensive and ongoing inspection program. In fact, BNSF leads the industry in using artificial intelligence for detecting wheel defects as algorithms sort through more than 35 million readings every day taken from our 4,000 wayside sensors to identify potential issues,” spokesman Zak Andersen says.

A Canadian National spokesman said the railroad has a calibration and maintenance protocol in place for its detectors. A Canadian Pacific spokesman referred to safety-related comments CEO Keith Creel made at an investor conference this week."

Perhaps people have zero understanding because they are constantly being lied to by government and big company officials, as well as the media.

Remember that the EPA told the 9/11 recovery workers it was safe to work in that area in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.  How many of those workers have died and/or come down with serious illnesses connected to what they were exposed to there?  The EPA said it was SAFE.

I live less than 2 miles from a major/busy NS rail line.  I'm on well water, and I too would be concerned if there was a major derailment with a chemical spill just 2 miles from my wellhead.  The water in my well is 75' from the surface but I can taste a difference in my water a few days after any significant rainfall event.  I see the chemicals that are stirred up when someone pokes the creek bottoms around E. Palestine and that would be alarming to me if it happened here.

Dilution doesn't make all toxins completely harmless.  I wouldn't want to drink water contaminated with low levels of toxins over a period of 20 years to see what impact that would have on my body, even if the .gov says those levels are "safe".  I would prefer drinking zero toxins.

A circular area with a radius of 21 miles would be over 1300 sq miles.  I'm at 3.8 miles away.  A circle with that radius would be 45 sq miles in area.  Even that's a huge area for an incident like ths to have reasoonably been expected to materially impact.  I tell people if the train had been 150 cars of vinyl chloride and all of them were breached, we would be having a different conversation.  It's almost like some people want this to be a major disaster.  Kind of like wishing for a cat 5 hurricane becasue it's more exciting than a cat 1.

I - along with many others - occasionally use the term "follow the money".

A lot of these so-called social media influencers have monetized their streams, and every single click adds $$$.

Thus, they gin up fear porn for consumption by the gullible masses. All those clicks, views, comments retweets and what have you are lining the pockets of the perpetuators.

In the case of East Palestine, the people who are truly getting screwed by all this are the residents. Everyone else seems to be profiting in some manner.

Attached File



Lol @ CN: “yeah we’s got some of dem detectors.”

That's not how that works. EPA assumes nothing if they have even a tangentially related corporation that they can charge.  NS, the people that made the rail car, the shipper/manufacturer of the chemical, somebody will get sued to pay the bill.

My well is extremely shallow. My house was built in 1920. My well is equal to the lake I live on.  So I get the concern.  

At the same time, I guess I’m confident in my chemistry. The only thing I’m sorta iffy about is if the benzine cars were actually empty or not.  They claim they were but, if they weren’t. That is legitimately bad news.

However I think we’re circling around the same thing. There is money to be made off the distrusts of the government.  So there’s people egging that on. And the government has burned their bridges of trust as well. So the residents are the ones getting screwed.

Fortunately (or maybe not?) the village has city water. With a state of the art system installed about 2-3 years ago.  Does it cover everyone in the radius? No. But most should be on city water not well. (And if you don’t trust the government… what good is city water?)

The idea of burning those chemicals off makes a catastrophic amount of dioxins, with wind patterns and rain fall around here, in the localized area..  just doesn’t seem realistic.  And as I said in my previous posts, this area has a ton of residual contamination from mining, steel industry, pottery industry, etc.

The creek in my farm is dead. Like, dead dead. Bright red. Devoid of all life. Because the government let a half ass contractor clean up a coal tipple.  We have personally spent ~$50,000 going after the current owner who isn’t doing his part on reclaiming the land, ODNR, the state of Ohio, etc.  which is why I know the area emergency epa coordinator for Ohio so well. He’s issued several citations that have gone no where.

I don’t trust the government for fuck or shit.  But, I’m speculating on my part of knowing a bit of chemistry and a lot about clean ups, that without it being any heavy metals. The fact it wasn’t a multi year / decade dumping facility.  And the fact it was a surface spill, with a fire, probably mitigates a lot of the contamination.

I know the residents are getting super annoyed because no one is giving them answers. I talked to my one employee that lives literally a block from the accident. And he’s really pissed off about everyone going there. But no answers to be had.

We're in the Toledo area.

That's  a LONG way away, especially when our prevailing winds are from the SW.

As they should be.

The whole thing has turned into a circus and politicking. It's complete bullshit. I'd be red hot fucking pissed, if I lived there. I'd be letting all the "adults" in charge fucking know it, too.

I’m slightly north west.  I’m directly north out of Salem.

The NS will pay for all derailment costs in this scenario

WRT the bolded:

My current day job involves leveraging these technologies for process inspection and notification, albeit in a different industry. However, data is data and trends are trends.

I get to attack the requirement(s) at a very high level then work with our various teams to design and implement analysis and reaction software. Should NS development staff have similar technologies in place I'd have no problem understanding their implementation and its limitations. Particularly, how they train their models.

Failing that, one of my teammates has a PhD in the field. I'd throw him under the bus (train) as I often do.

Bearing temps: I posted a PDF link a page or two back which states that anything under 170 degrees F is considered GTG by the bearing manufacturer which published it.

As you pointed out, the analysis software shouldn't focus on thresholds but rather, trends across the entire consist. The more HBDs your train crosses in a given movement, the better your instantaneous model becomes. And any discrepancies with a given axle become more apparent.

@Y-T71 -

How's the air quality over there? Any health issues being reported?

FRA posts Notice of Safety Advisory regarding use of HBDs





NS owning 3 of the 5 known derailments due to overheated bearings in the last few years isn’t looking too good for them. I especially like the one where they sent an electrician to inspect the questionable bearing.

Another field I'm somewhat familiar with is spectral and signature analysis.

To that point, have railways or roller bearing manufacturers ever done acoustical fingerprinting of roller bearings in their normal and failure domains?

Jacon can better speak about that than I. But acoustical detectors are a thing, so I assume they have known sound signatures for normal and abnormal. Whether they collect readings on each car and maintain it in a database to compare trends, I don’t know.

I don’t recall if it was in this thread or somewhere else, but I read that there are only 39 such acoustical detectors in use in the country.

Railroad association opposes changes to Ohio railroad regulations

Media Advisory
Federal, State and Local Governments to Host Joint Media Briefing on Norfolk Southern Train Derailment Recovery Efforts

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio -- Federal, state and local partners will hold a news conference today with members of the media to provide an update and details on the recovery efforts to the Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine that occurred Feb. 3.

WHEN:  4 p.m. ET, March 1, 2023

WHERE:  East Palestine City Park Community Center Parking Lot, 31 Park Dr., East Palestine, Ohio 44413

WHO:
Governor Mike DeWine and First Lady Fran DeWine
Federal Railroad Administration Administrator Amit Bose
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Anne Vogel
Ohio Department of Public Safety Director Andy Wilson
Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff
FEMA Region 5 Regional Administrator Thomas C. Sivak
CDC/ATSDR Team Lead Jill Shugart

ASL interpretation will be provided at today’s briefing and moving forward.

Live stream the press briefing here: www.youtube.com/@FEMA/live
 
Please RSVP NLT 3 p.m. ET to [email protected].

###

@AnalogKid

Yes. Go look up Acoustic Bearing Detectors.

TTCI has written a ton of papers on bearing defects and their acoustic signatures. They are expensive relative to HBDs so there are fewer deployed.

There’s also fewer manufacturers qualified to deploy these detectors because the process to become qualified on the acoustic algorithm is incredibly difficult.

Not many companies have accomplished this feat and this detector has been surrounded in controversy since inception, for reasons I won’t get into here.

LOL, strike while the iron is hot I guess. Not a single one of those measures prevents this derailment.

They've been successfully deployed in factories / heavy industries to control auto-greasers for bearings.  

Pretty cool technology, but as you said - hard to deploy.

Referred to as a Centerbeam Bulkhead Flatcar and they’re the fucking worst for train handling. They don’t have any weight when empty and crumple like origami paper if the in-train buff forces get too great.  

Y’all probably didn’t see it but that boom at the beginning is the buff forces popping the first black tank car out of the bolster. It takes a little bit to see it, but if you look close, the tank car got shoved into the back of the low sided gon yet stayed on the rail.

Fuck. I’d hate to be the wreck crew charged with separating that centerbeam from the bridge. Effffffff

Didn’t hear the air go.   Must’ve been off air, yard job perhaps?

It was an "UNcontrolled burn"...

Where is west Liverpool Ohio?

Sick East Palestine Residents TURNED AWAY by Norfolk Southern for Not Bringing Social Security Cards

Well...it was mentioned on Facebook so it MUST exist.

It’s right next to Retardville, where that guy lives.