Rail safety was the subject of a meeting this week hosted by the North Dakota Public Service Commission.
The railroads – major carriers and short lines – were there to discuss their safety issues, and what they’re doing to prevent derailments.
"I can assure you that everyone in the rail industry completely and entirely focus on safety," said BNSF regional assistant for public affairs Amy McBeth. "It's the most paramount thing that we do."
McBeth told the PSC there has been a renewed public focus on safety, following a major derailment in Ohio, where hazardous chemicals were released into the environment there. That was on the Norfolk-Southern line. But McBeth told the PSC – these kinds of incidents are becoming more rare.
"About 99.99 percent of all haz-mat shipments make it to their destination without a release," McBeth said. "Rail is the safest way to move goods by land, and the most environmentally friendly to do it as well."
As for BNSF, McBeth said the carrier has invested a lot of money in technology, to help prevent incidents. She highlighted BNSF’s “significant detector network.”
"We have, on our network, more than 4,000 trackside detectors that are reading and taking 35 million readings a day," McBeth said. "We share that information across the railroads, because the equipment moves not only on our network, but on other networks as well."
McBeth said BNSF believes that leveraging the technology it already has, and looking for additional innovation, is the way to continue to drive safety in the industry.
Larry Lloyd is the US Government Affairs director for the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City and Southern Railroad (CP-KC), which serves both US and Canadian markets. He told the Commission CP-KC has what are called “hotbox” sensors, to determine whether a rail car’s bearings are about to fail. But he said the railroad has added “acoustic bearing” sensors.
"When the 'hot box' detector goes off, it's telling you there is a problem with that bearing now, and you need to pull that train off to the side, or stop it at the next yard, and do maintenance on it," Lloyd said. "With the acoustic bearing detector, you can actually listen to the noise coming from that bearing, and with predictive analytics, you can determine a timeline for when that bearing is going to fail — two, three or four weeks in the future."
Lloyd said if you're hauling North Dakota grain, it means the train can keep going to the next destination, deliver the grain, and then you can pull the train off the track safely and do maintenance, and not have to stop the train en route.
Lloyd told the PSC CP-KC has a very good safety record. He said for the last 17 years in a row, CP has been tops in safety ratings.