Sunday, November 23, 2014

And if trains in July WI collision carried explosive crude oil?

What 'only' resulted in injured workers, a 4,000-gallons diesel fuel spill, local evacuations and many wrecked cars and locomotives near Slinger earlier this year could have been catastrophic if volatile tar sand or Bakken shale crude oil had been the cargo  - - which now routinely flows across Wisconsin, often unannounced to authorities.

Cargo which has led to events like these:
train derailment
Consider yourself warned, Bucky

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a very unintelligent post -- you don't know what you are talking about (in terms of railroading) and are just fearmongering.

Wisconsin & Southern is a rink-a-dink operation where trains back into each other -- that's what little regionnals like scotty walker's BFF WSOR does.

Crude runs on Union Pacific, Burnington Northern Santa Fe, Canadian Pacific and Canadian National.

Shame on you for equating the operations of these Class 1 railroads with the incompetent choo-choo trains of Ed Burkhart (pic you show -- formerly of Wisconsin Central) and Wisconsin & Southern.

Anonymous said...

WI and Southern was bought out by WATCO. WATCO is partially owned by Kinder Morgan so I think you are wrong about WI southern carrying crude as it was part of the agreement when Kinder Morgan invested in WATCO (WI Southern) in 2010.

Anonymous said...

This is from the WATCO website and plainly states that WSOR moves petroleum.

On January 1, 2012, Watco was proud to have the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad (WSOR) join the Watco family of short line railroads. The WSOR is a Class II regional railroad company operating in the southern half of the State of Wisconsin and a small portion of northeastern Illinois. WSOR operates over 700 miles of branch and mainline track traversing a total of 21 counties in Wisconsin and Illinois. WSOR is Wisconsin’s second largest railroad.

Headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, WSOR directly connects within the state with the western Class I railroads BNSF, Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, and Union Pacific. With access to Chicago via the Belt Railway of Chicago, WSOR connects with the eastern Class I railroads CSX and Norfolk Southern. WSOR also has access to harbor facilities on the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien and maintains several transloading sites within its system.

WSOR has branch offices in Janesville and Horicon, Wisconsin. WSOR operates on mostly former Milwaukee Road tracks that were earmarked for abandonment in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These tracks are now owned and managed cooperatively by the State of Wisconsin and 18 counties with which WSOR has a 50-year operating agreement. WSOR also leases and operates 66 miles of tracks owned by the Union Pacific.

WSOR transports a variety of commodities for its customer base including lumber, coal, liquid and dry fertilizers, corn, beans, plastic, aggregates, ethanol, and liquid petroleum. Since its inception in 1980, WSOR has quadrupled the freight business of the previous carriers, handling more than 50,000 carloads annually.

Access to barge facilities for bulk commodities on the Mississippi River is available at Prairie Du Chien. WSOR has rail-to-truck transloading facilities at Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Plymouth, Ripon, Horicon, Janesville, and Madison.

Anonymous said...

Why are you all taking a "hypothetical" literally? Aren't hypothetical comments supposed to get people to think about a subject, not to forecast an outcome?

James Rowen said...

Anon 8:31. Thank you.