10/21 Derailment outside of Pittsburgh

I saw that on the news this morning. Quite a mess. Now we have ethanol to add to all of the other products in tank cars. Although I suppose smaller quantities of ethanol have been around for years.
 
That is less than 10 miles from where I used to live.
I know exactly where that is.
My wife was just talking to one of our friends from the old nieborhood who's grandson (a fire fighter) has been on the scene since last night.
 
We had a similar wreck in Mississauga, Ont. in the late 70s.(I posted a write-up on the 25th anniversary.) It occured at the one level crossing that had nothing around it after passing through some densely populated suburbs. The complication in that wreck was cars full of chlorine and toluene as well as propane (I think). A quarter of a million people were evacuated for a week until the fire burnt itself down to the point where they could cover the gashes in the tankers. They decided that the chlorine had been sent skyward in the first few minutes.
 
The good news is that it seems no one was seriously injured.

Ethanol isn't really a dangerous chemical. I'm pretty sure it's a corn product. It's highly flammable of course, but it shouldn't pose much of an environmental threat to the air or water.
 
Amtrak affected

Since NS had to reroute it's traffic onto CSX, I got to drive Amtrak from Ashtabula to New Castle. P030 was rerouted from Cleveland, to Ashtabula, down the NS Younstown line, and onto CSX to New Castle. It then went via the B&P, and AVRR to reach the station at Pittsburgh. What a reroute!!

200 passengers probably weren't too happy with the delay. We had to wait at Ashtabula for an hour for an NS official to ride the train. Waste of time.

This makes my 2nd time piloting Amtrak. Neat. They have cruise control!!!

We set the spedometer for 40 mph on the Youngstown line.
CSX widebodys don't have cruise control above 10 mph.

Smooth ride, great brakes. Too late at night for pictures.
 
csxengineer said:
Since NS had to reroute it's traffic onto CSX, I got to drive Amtrak from Ashtabula to New Castle. P030 was rerouted from Cleveland, to Ashtabula, down the NS Younstown line, and onto CSX to New Castle. It then went via the B&P, and AVRR to reach the station at Pittsburgh. What a reroute!!

200 passengers probably weren't too happy with the delay. We had to wait at Ashtabula for an hour for an NS official to ride the train. Waste of time.

This makes my 2nd time piloting Amtrak. Neat. They have cruise control!!!

We set the spedometer for 40 mph on the Youngstown line.
CSX widebodys don't have cruise control above 10 mph.

Smooth ride, great brakes. Too late at night for pictures.
Click to expand...

Any chance of a map or a link to a map please?

Cruise control???
 
We had a similar wreck in Mississauga, Ont. in the late 70s.(I posted a write-up on the 25th anniversary.) It occured at the one level crossing that had nothing around it after passing through some densely populated suburbs. The complication in that wreck was cars full of chlorine and toluene as well as propane (I think). A quarter of a million people were evacuated for a week until the fire burnt itself down to the point where they could cover the gashes in the tankers. They decided that the chlorine had been sent skyward in the first few minutes.
Click to expand...

That is probably the first big news event in my life that I remember clearly. I vividly remember the picture of the fiery wreck on the front cover of the Sun....it kind of put a damper on my blossoming train obsession as I recall. It's simply amazing that there were no injuries.
 
Not all the reroutes went over CSX. Some have been sent over the Wheeling & Lake Erie to Bellevue and then back to home rails there.

For those that missed chemistry, ethanol is produced from corn. It's become popular recently as a replacement for gasoline in some automobiles although it's been used as a fuel additive for many years. It regularly moves in unit trains from the Midwest to the Northeast as well as in smaller cuts in regular freight trains.
 
It was out within twenty-four hours. Track 1 was opened on Monday evening and I believe Track 2 was supposed to be opened by Saturday.
 
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