PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: nddons on February 16, 2023, 06:40:38 AM
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Rush, you may know better than anyone, but what is the railroad industry saying about this?
Seems like the post-crash handling of it was abominable and created what I’ve read as the “American Chernobyl.”
And FedGov is absent it seems. NTSB? EPA? DOT? FEMA? It’s almost like they wanted to destroy an area that voted 71% for Trump.
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Proof that we should replace oil pipelines with trains.
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Warren Buffett owns a shit ton of railroad companies, doesn’t he?
But pipelines are dangerous.
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I'm from East Palestine. Still have a decent bit of extended family in the area.
The train tracks run right through downtown, and get a lot of use. Remember playing around the tracks as a kid and hearing the trains go by all night.
From what my cousins are saying this is nasty, animals are sick/dying, people have sore throats, etc.
-Dan
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If you remember back when BHO was president, and Nashville got hit with severe weather. He ignored them as well because Tennessee was a red state.
Like everything else going on right now around us, there's a lot more going on. We're being played on an epic level we've never seen before.
But hey, Nordstream is out of the news cycle, as well as the Epstein files and Hunter's laptop.
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This is about 2 hours east from me. It's still big news locally. We had a local derailment a few months earlier. Thankfully none of the tankers were carrying hazardous material. Hours before it derailed, this same train passed within a mile from my house. Still no word about how it derailed, just a lot of finger pointing that it wasn't labeled properly as a hazardous load. Not gonna lie, I'm glad that the prevailing winds blow to the north and east, and that my drinking water won't be affected by this. There seems to be a lot of repairs on my areas tracks the past few years. Not sure if it's just preventive maintenance, or more in depth repairs. I always stop way back from the gates when a train passes. Drives the wife nuts, and she rolls her eyes when I tell her I want an out in case the train derails in front of us, but I think I have reasoning in my side.
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Train carrying toxic chemicals through a populated area, State government didn't know. I've read mechanical problems lead to the derailment, but early days yet. Sounds really bad. I heard on the radio this morning that the train company is offering residents first and last month's rent and moving expenses if they want to get out of there, which sounds like a good idea.
Calling it Chernobyl is a bit much, it is chemical, not nuclear, and the effects are quite localized. I doubt there are any good options in a disaster of this type, and that those in charge did the best they could under the circumstances. Things there are quite bad right now, hopefully they'll improve as the chemicals work their way out of the area. Hopefully.
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The railroad offering money to residents is a bad idea, and any lawyer would advise them not to accept.
There's going to be millions, if not billions in damages. The RR is trying to get in front of this.
The chemical burn was beyond ignorant, and the devastation from this will take years to sort out. The chemical burn went into the atmosphere and then spread downwind, dropping residue with it. So this is now not a local problem, but one that goes several miles.
The ground soil is highly contaminated, as is the water table. This will leech out for miles.
FedGov was an absolute disaster in this, as was the state gov. But hey, their resources are limited because the focus on equity, transgender and CRT takes time, so can't be bothered with something so trivial as rail safety.
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First of all, trains are the best way to transport these hazardous substances. Pipelines would be totally impractical and trucks much more likely to crash and spill.
Second, neither Biden nor Trump, nor Buttigieg are to blame for this. If there is a single person to blame, his name is E. Hunter Harrison and he is dead.
The following is the scuttlebutt I heard, not the officially determined cause:
The proximate cause was failure to detect an overheated axle box in time to stop the fire and the derailment. One reason for that was increasing the temperature threshold for the detector. But the distal cause was PSR (precision scheduled railroading) which resulted in cutting back workers. Fewer workers to detect an emerging problem, and very overworked, fatigued workers with low morale.
Warren Buffet owns BNSF. The BN did not implement PSR. Probably because Buffet himself owns it, and can make intelligent decisions for long term, as opposed to the publicly owned class Is, focused on short term profit.
PSR was first implemented in Canada on the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railroads. But Canada has very long flat runs, carrying commodities along very routine routes. PSR makes sense there. But Harrison then took a job with CSX in the eastern USA and implemented it with them, then the NS created their own version, and it has not been good for the types of routes common for eastern U.S. geography.
PSR is a way to cut costs and increase efficiency in the short run but we are finding out bad in the long run. You can get away with fewer workers for a while but lack of maintenance and shortcuts such as reducing your safety factor for temperature increases around the axel, for example, will bite you in the long run.
It’s funny watching the partisan sniping on Twitter about whether it’s Trump’s fault or Biden’s fault. In reality, it is capitalism. CSX and NS are in competition. They try to lower costs so they don’t have to raise freight rates and they want to maximize return for their investors. That’s a good thing. You want people to invest in the railroads. Virtually all the food you buy and many goods had some or all components carried to you by rail. You want them to profit. The only thing worse than an imperfect capitalist system would be government owned nationalized railroads.
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While the accident itself is not to blame on FedGov, the response is, and is shared with the state level.
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First of all, trains are the best way to transport these hazardous substances. Pipelines would be totally impractical and trucks much more likely to crash and spill.
Second, neither Biden nor Trump, nor Buttigieg are to blame for this. If there is a single person to blame, his name is E. Hunter Harrison and he is dead.
The following is the scuttlebutt I heard, not the officially determined cause:
The proximate cause was failure to detect an overheated axle box in time to stop the fire and the derailment. One reason for that was increasing the temperature threshold for the detector. But the distal cause was PSR (precision scheduled railroading) which resulted in cutting back workers. Fewer workers to detect an emerging problem, and very overworked, fatigued workers with low morale.
Warren Buffet owns BNSF. The BN did not implement PSR. Probably because Buffet himself owns it, and can make intelligent decisions for long term, as opposed to the publicly owned class Is, focused on short term profit.
PSR was first implemented in Canada on the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railroads. But Canada has very long flat runs, carrying commodities along very routine routes. PSR makes sense there. But Harrison then took a job with CSX in the eastern USA and implemented it with them, then the NS created their own version, and it has not been good for the types of routes common for eastern U.S. geography.
PSR is a way to cut costs and increase efficiency in the short run but we are finding out bad in the long run. You can get away with fewer workers for a while but lack of maintenance and shortcuts such as reducing your safety factor for temperature increases around the axel, for example, will bite you in the long run.
It’s funny watching the partisan sniping on Twitter about whether it’s Trump’s fault or Biden’s fault. In reality, it is capitalism. CSX and NS are in competition. They try to lower costs so they don’t have to raise freight rates and they want to maximize return for their investors. That’s a good thing. You want people to invest in the railroads. Virtually all the food you buy and many goods had some or all components carried to you by rail. You want them to profit. The only thing worse than an imperfect capitalist system would be government owned nationalized railroads.
Could the overheating axle box be an issue of too many cars on a train? Seems to me that the trains I'm seeing there are more and more cars in them. More cars, more money saved in the eyes of railroad execs? But in return, more weight and more friction, etc., on the cars themsleves causing maintenance issues like overheating axles?
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While the accident itself is not to blame on FedGov, the response is, and is shared with the state level.
Oh yes, I agree with that.
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Could the overheating axle box be an issue of too many cars on a train? Seems to me that the trains I'm seeing there are more and more cars in them. More cars, more money saved in the eyes of railroad execs? But in return, more weight and more friction, etc., on the cars themsleves causing maintenance issues like overheating axles?
There are indeed more cars and longer trains which is partially a result of PSR. The length of the train may have played a role in the failure by the crew to see the sparks but I don’t think it contributes to overheating axles but that is a guess on my part. Longer trains have more locomotives. I believe this one had three. Each locomotive is rated to haul a certain load and so more are employed as needed.
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Train carrying toxic chemicals through a populated area, State government didn't know. I've read mechanical problems lead to the derailment, but early days yet. Sounds really bad. I heard on the radio this morning that the train company is offering residents first and last month's rent and moving expenses if they want to get out of there, which sounds like a good idea.
Calling it Chernobyl is a bit much, it is chemical, not nuclear, and the effects are quite localized. I doubt there are any good options in a disaster of this type, and that those in charge did the best they could under the circumstances. Things there are quite bad right now, hopefully they'll improve as the chemicals work their way out of the area. Hopefully.
I agree, it’s nothing like Chernobyl although pretty serious for those locally. For sure there will be a slew of lawsuits as these people age and develop cancer etc. whether or not it was actually caused by the chemicals. Which certainly some might be, but it’s a statistical average thing rather than a proven cause and effect in any individual case. It’s gonna be a big mess. It’ll contribute to the increasing cost of everything we consume as NS cost to defend and payout will be passed on to us. >:(
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I agree, it’s nothing like Chernobyl although pretty serious for those locally. For sure there will be a slew of lawsuits as these people age and develop cancer etc. whether or not it was actually caused by the chemicals. Which certainly some might be, but it’s a statistical average thing rather than a proven cause and effect in any individual case. It’s gonna be a big mess. It’ll contribute to the increasing cost of everything we consume as NS cost to defend and payout will be passed on to us. >:(
Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. The American Way.
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First of all, trains are the best way to transport these hazardous substances. Pipelines would be totally impractical and trucks much more likely to crash and spill.
Second, neither Biden nor Trump, nor Buttigieg are to blame for this. If there is a single person to blame, his name is E. Hunter Harrison and he is dead.
The following is the scuttlebutt I heard, not the officially determined cause:
The proximate cause was failure to detect an overheated axle box in time to stop the fire and the derailment. One reason for that was increasing the temperature threshold for the detector. But the distal cause was PSR (precision scheduled railroading) which resulted in cutting back workers. Fewer workers to detect an emerging problem, and very overworked, fatigued workers with low morale.
Warren Buffet owns BNSF. The BN did not implement PSR. Probably because Buffet himself owns it, and can make intelligent decisions for long term, as opposed to the publicly owned class Is, focused on short term profit.
PSR was first implemented in Canada on the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railroads. But Canada has very long flat runs, carrying commodities along very routine routes. PSR makes sense there. But Harrison then took a job with CSX in the eastern USA and implemented it with them, then the NS created their own version, and it has not been good for the types of routes common for eastern U.S. geography.
PSR is a way to cut costs and increase efficiency in the short run but we are finding out bad in the long run. You can get away with fewer workers for a while but lack of maintenance and shortcuts such as reducing your safety factor for temperature increases around the axel, for example, will bite you in the long run.
It’s funny watching the partisan sniping on Twitter about whether it’s Trump’s fault or Biden’s fault. In reality, it is capitalism. CSX and NS are in competition. They try to lower costs so they don’t have to raise freight rates and they want to maximize return for their investors. That’s a good thing. You want people to invest in the railroads. Virtually all the food you buy and many goods had some or all components carried to you by rail. You want them to profit. The only thing worse than an imperfect capitalist system would be government owned nationalized railroads.
Thanks for the great info, Rush.
I’m not one for blaming Biden or Trump for the derailment. But I do place blame on FedGov, particularly FEMA, EPA, and BUTGIZZ for the pathetic response.
I saw someone on the news that said they were offered an “independent” testing agency to test their property and water for environmental hazards. The agency was hired by the railroad, and before they would do the test, they were required to sign a hold harmless agreement. The woman was a business owner and was savvy enough to not restrict her rights, so she didn’t get the testing.
Steingar, “Chernobyl” was certainly an overstatement, but we have plenty of precedent for dead towns: Love Canal, NY, Times Beach, MO, etc.
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Thanks for the great info, Rush.
I’m not one for blaming Biden or Trump for the derailment. But I do place blame on FedGov, particularly FEMA, EPA, and BUTGIZZ for the pathetic response.
I saw someone on the news that said they were offered an “independent” testing agency to test their property and water for environmental hazards. The agency was hired by the railroad, and before they would do the test, they were required to sign a hold harmless agreement. The woman was a business owner and was savvy enough to not restrict her rights, so she didn’t get the testing.
Steingar, “Chernobyl” was certainly an overstatement, but we have plenty of precedent for dead towns: Love Canal, NY, Times Beach, MO, etc.
I was wondering if those given $1000 or whatever by NS to compensate for being outed from their homes were required to sign some sort of release. My understanding of the law (very limited) is such a release may not hold up in court. But it may discourage some people from trying to bring a case.
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I don't know the place very well, so I might be speaking out of turn. Most rural places in Ohio are to some degree impoverished. The fact that well used train tracks run through the middle of town suggests to me that this could be the case for Palestine, Ohio. If so, residents may not have the resources or wherewithal to file suit. Seems a recurring theme in America.
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The lawyers are racing to East Palestine right now.
This is going to be a billion dollar payday for the lawyers and their clients.
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Is Erin on the way? ;D
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. If so, residents may not have the resources or wherewithal to file suit. Seems a recurring theme in America.
What if I can’t afford a lawyer?
Morgan & Morgan believes that everyone deserves high-quality legal representation, no matter their financial status. We operate on a contingency fee basis, which means you pay us only if and when we win your case. Our fee would come in the form of a percentage of the settlement or verdict amount we obtain.
https://www.forthepeople.com/auto-accident-attorneys/get-a-lawyer/?ads_adsid=76897259088220&utm_kxconfid=ty6howcay&msclkid=7d5ef762350a16daf104948c57e87e9c
The recurring theme is people suing for things like hot coffee, or getting their feelings hurt.
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The lawyers are racing to East Palestine right now.
This is going to be a billion dollar payday for the lawyers.
Fixed that for you.
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I don't know the place very well, so I might be speaking out of turn. Most rural places in Ohio are to some degree impoverished. The fact that well used train tracks run through the middle of town suggests to me that this could be the case for Palestine, Ohio. If so, residents may not have the resources or wherewithal to file suit. Seems a recurring theme in America.
I live in a rural Ohio town that is well above the poverty line and we have train tracks that run right through the middle of our downtown. Stop speaking out of your ass.
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I live in a rural Ohio town that is well above the poverty line and we have train tracks that run right through the middle of our downtown. Stop speaking out of your ass.
Not much chance of that.
I’m sure secretary butt-i-gizz is all over the potential white supremacy angle on the derailment.
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Wow. The feds burn the chemicals releasing toxins in the air and then deny aid. This is not going to sit well. I believe this just torpedoed any chance for the left to secure Ohio in the next POTUS election.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-turns-down-ohios-request-disaster-assistance-toxic-derailment
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Is Erin on the way? ;D
Erin Brockovich sounds alarm on East Palestine train derailment: 'I've never seen anything like this'
Right on schedule
https://www.foxnews.com/media/erin-brockovich-sounds-alarm-east-palestine-train-derailment-never-seen-anything-like (https://www.foxnews.com/media/erin-brockovich-sounds-alarm-east-palestine-train-derailment-never-seen-anything-like)
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I live in a rural Ohio town that is well above the poverty line and we have train tracks that run right through the middle of our downtown. Stop speaking out of your ass.
Why I prefaced my remarks saying I didn't know the place. But I've seen lots of Ohio towns in my wanderings that have seen better days. That, and train tracks tend to run where property values are the lowest, for obvious reasons. That said, there is a set just behind the Steinholme. Tells you something.
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Didn't you know? This is Trump's fault.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/02/16/fact-check-pete-buttigieg-blames-trump-ohio-train-disaster/
We’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe.We’re constrained by law on some areas of rail regulation (like the braking rule withdrawn by the Trump administration in 2018 because of a law passed by Congress in 2015), but we are using the powers we do have to keep people safe.
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Why I prefaced my remarks saying I didn't know the place. But I've seen lots of Ohio towns in my wanderings that have seen better days. That, and train tracks tend to run where property values are the lowest, for obvious reasons. That said, there is a set just behind the Steinholme. Tells you something.
Almost all towns and cities came to be due to access to either bodies of navigable waters, railroads, or major roadways. The “Milwaukee Plank Road’ was built in the 1850s, and ran from downtown Chicago to downtown Milwaukee. There’s an illinois town called “Halfday”, and it was named that because it took a half day by horse drawn carriage to make it to that town from Chicago.
So rail doesn’t necessarily correlate with poverty. If the rail feeds industry, then the town at one point decided they wanted Industry to employ its citizens.
The one town that does not fit my premise is Charlotte, NC. I lived there for 6 years and still don’t understand why it came to be right there. I’m guessing some Indian trails crossed paths there or something.
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Pretty sad state of affairs.
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Why I prefaced my remarks saying I didn't know the place. But I've seen lots of Ohio towns in my wanderings that have seen better days. That, and train tracks tend to run where property values are the lowest, for obvious reasons. That said, there is a set just behind the Steinholme. Tells you something.
I'm not sure what you are implying but it seems to me that you are saying the evil railroads build their railroads through the middle of poor neighborhoods out of racism or some such ulterior motive.
My thought is that the railroads built their railroads where the demand was and were the cause of much industrial growth and progress. However the problem is that people didn't want to live near train tracks so demand for that property for residences was low, thus the price was low, thus you have poor neighborhoods built near the railroads. Not vice versa.
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I'm not sure what you are implying but it seems to me that you are saying the evil railroads build their railroads through the middle of poor neighborhoods out of racism or some such ulterior motive.
My thought is that the railroads built their railroads where the demand was and were the cause of much industrial growth and progress. However the problem is that people didn't want to live near train tracks so demand for that property for residences was low, thus the price was low, thus you have poor neighborhoods built near the railroads. Not vice versa.
Correct. I am in the middle of reading a very detailed history of the development of the American rail system. It was built by ambitious men who wanted profit. This required building the tracks through areas that were centers of industrial production PLUS population centers that supplied paying passengers. Cities were not slums full of poor people when these routes were set, but centers of the well to do, who wanted to be near this incredible new mode of transportation. Keep in mind it was travel by horse and carriage otherwise, which was miserable and exhausting.
In addition, for the westward expansion, it was the railroads who often created the cities. They’d buy (or be granted by the government) a bunch of land surrounding tracks they were laying in the middle of nowhere, and then sell off the lots to the westward “pioneers”. One of the main drivers of all rail expansion west of the Mississippi was gold and silver. There were silver mines on the eastern foothills of the Rockies and the gold rush in California. Bringing your rail to California was the Holy Grail and it was direct competition - quite hostile - between two particular men that drove them both to push through or around the mountains to reach the Pacific coast.
In the east you had farms and factories for freight demand, and everywhere you had passenger demand which exploded once the railroads had the idea to have a dining car and provide upscale meals, smoking lounges, and sleeping compartments.
Where you had lower class populations in the east, both black and white, the railroads brought jobs in the way of baggage handlers, conductors, cooks, and railcar repair. The railroads brought prosperity all up and down the socioeconomic hierarchy and for all races. It was racist in the sense of they had separate cars for blacks and whites, the usual Jim Crow stuff, but jobs and passenger transportation came to black communities the same as white. Remember, the time between emancipation and the mid 20th century was a time of steady progress for blacks, despite continuing discrimination (such as gun control laws, separate schools and water fountains etc.) It wasn’t until the demise of cities through loss of industry, and the destruction of the black nuclear family through welfare, and the switch from passenger rail to air travel, that turned these communities from thriving places into criminal hellholes.
Rail became freight only. Gone were the passenger stations and the need for associated services and jobs. The tracks and the trains that came through on them went from things of excitement and opportunity which actually drew the community to simply freight rolling through. That it remains today, and to most people only represents an annoyance when we’re stopped at a crossing. Trains have left our conscious awareness as the vital arteries that bring everything to us for our survival.
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The only reason liberals whine about racist railroads and highways is because they have no fucking clue how the country came to be and are far too lazy to put in the effort required to know and understand the truth.
Flinging bullshit claims of racism is so much easier than having a clue about anything that resembles effort, intelligence and work.
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Why I prefaced my remarks saying I didn't know the place. But I've seen lots of Ohio towns in my wanderings that have seen better days. That, and train tracks tend to run where property values are the lowest, for obvious reasons. That said, there is a set just behind the Steinholme. Tells you something.
I'm reminded of the parable of the blind men and an elephant:
" The parable of the blind men and an elephant is a story of a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their limited experience and their descriptions of the elephant are different from each other. In some versions, they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true."
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Didn't slaves build all the railroads?
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The only reason liberals whine about racist railroads and highways is because they have no filing clue how the country came to be and are far too lazy to put in the effort required to know and understand the truth.
Flinging bullshit claims of racism is so much easier than having a clue about anything that resembles effort, intelligence and work.
This country is woefully uneducated. Now, “history” is being taught in the context of overriding racism, white supremacy, and colonialism. The truth is the spread of Northern European whites to the world was a result of technological development arising from geographical advantages and was neither good nor bad, but both, and was inevitable. It resulted in many evils but also many good things, if you consider the modern world good, in that we have much less poverty, much longer lifespans, and more food than we can possibly eat, in the developed world, as long as we can avoid war. Aside from the Democrat controlled hellholes, blacks are essentially arrived to the same level of advantage as whites; there is no longer disparity. Those Native Americans who chose to assimilate into the new (advanced) culture and didn’t insist on remaining on reservations to wallow in nostalgia about their Stone Age past did equally well.
That’s not to say we don’t still have racial disparity, but it’s almost exclusively located in the Democrat run cities and they’ve painted themselves into a terrible corner. Black male agency has been removed by bad economic policy, and human male agency is the foundation of civilization and survival.