CN Rail's preliminary investigation points to the failure of a wheel-axle combination in a car as the trigger for a derailment that led to a huge fire near Plaster Rock on Tuesday, according to a spokesman for the railway.
Smoke and steam were still coming from the accident scene in a rural setting on Thursday morning and a Transportation Safety Board (TSB) official said it was not known how long the fire would continue to burn.
CN Rail spokesman Jim Feeny told CBC's Information Morning in Fredericton that CN's preliminary investigation indicates there was a sudden failure of a wheel, or perhaps a wheel-axle combination on Car 13, which was the first car that derailed toward the front of the 122-car train.
"That then led to application of the emergency braking system, which is exactly what it's designed to do," said Feeny. "If there is a mishap of this sort on a train, the emergency brakes are designed to apply and then bring the train to a stop.
"However, as that was happening, the further 16 cars and locomotive combination
[derailment] occurred towards the end of the train. That's where we had the fire."
Guy Laporte of the Transportation Safety Board says there was a crack in one of the wheels in the first car to derail near Plaster Rock. (CBC)
Among the cars that derailed at the end of the train were five cars carrying crude oil and four cars filled with liquefied petroleum gas.
Number of cars in derailment revised
At a news conference later Thursday, TSB investigator Guy Laporte revised the number of cars involved in the derailment upward, to 19 cars and a remote locomotive.
The continuing fire has prevented Laporte from getting a close look a the derailed cars at the rear of the train.
However, Laporte was able to observe a cracked wheel on the car toward the front of the train.
"The axle is not broken — I saw that yesterday," said LaPorte. "The wheel just got inside the rail and dropped to the ground."
A broken rail was also discovered, he said.
Each tank car can carry between 550 and 650 barrels of oil, according to the Rail Association of Canada.
DOT-111 tank cars involved in Lac-Megantic
Feeny confirmed some of the tank cars on the train were the DOT-111 classification, or its Canadian equivalent, but could not say if they were among the derailed cars.
DOT-111 tank cars, called CTC-111A in Canada, were involved in the Lac-Megantic, Que., derailment in Quebec in August that killed 47 people. As early as 1994, regulators at the TSB wrote that this type of tanker car had a flawed design and that they have a "high incidence of tank integrity failure" during accidents.
Laporte said he was confident some of the derailed cars in Plaster Rock involved the DOT-111 model.
"I'm pretty sure of that," he said. "The crude oil is transported by DOT-111."
Feeny said there have been derailments in the past involving the failure of a train wheel, or wheel-axle combination.
Investigators will now need to determine the sequence of events, he said.
"What happened first? Was there a problem with the wheel? Did that lead to a problem with the axle?" he said.
"We have a preliminary indications. What we don't have is a definitive analysis of the chain of events yet. That will take some time."
The TSB is in charge of the investigation.
Air and ground assessments of the area are expected to continue.
The CN freight train jumped the tracks and caught fire late Tuesday near the village of Plaster Rock.
The train was headed east from Toronto to Moncton, N.B.
The crude oil was from Western Canada, said Claude Mongeau, president and CEO of CN Rail, at a news conference in Plaster Rock on Wednesday.
The crude oil and propane were destined for the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, he said.
It is not known if the crude oil was heavy crude, or the potentially more explosive Bakken crude, which comes from North Dakota and southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Bakken crude was involved in the massive derailment and explosion in Lac-Mégantic. That shipment was also destined for the Saint John refinery.
Aerial images from the scene near Plaster Rock show a jumble of burning cars strewn across the tracks in a wooded area.
No one was injured, but about 150 people living in nearby homes were told to leave soon after the train derailed.
54 derailments in N.B. since 2003
Fifty-four trains carrying dangerous goods have derailed across New Brunswick over the past decade, CBC News has learned.
A train that caught fire in Wapske, N.B., was carrying propane and crude oil at the time of the derailment. (Google)
The 2003-12 figures come from a TSB database of reported rail occurrences obtained by CBC News as part of an ongoing investigation into rail safety.
Nearly a quarter of those reported derailments involving dangerous goods cars — 13 in total — happened in what's known as the Napadogan subdivision, an area that includes the tracks where yesterday's derailment took place. However, the subdivision hasn't had a dangerous goods car derailment for the past five years, since 2007.
Across New Brunswick and on the Napadogan subdivision train lines, there has been a decrease in the number of derailments and occurrences in general over the past decade.
At least two other derailments have happened near Plaster Rock, one in 2004 and another in 2005. Both involved CN Rail cars carrying dangerous goods. One involved petroleum gases, while in the other case the product type is not stated.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
CN derailment probe focuses on problem with car's wheel-axle
Dengan url
http://belajarbisnismen.blogspot.com/2014/01/cn-derailment-probe-focuses-on-problem.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
CN derailment probe focuses on problem with car's wheel-axle
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
CN derailment probe focuses on problem with car's wheel-axle
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar