20 cars of Norfolk Southern cargo train derail in Ohio
Source: AP
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — About 20 cars of a Norfolk Southern cargo train derailed near Springfield Saturday evening, the second derailment of the company’s trains in Ohio in a month, officials said. But unlike the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, a company spokesperson said there were no hazardous materials aboard the train, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The train, which did not have passengers, derailed around 5 p.m. Saturday by State Route 41, near the Clark County Fairgrounds, the Dispatch reported. Springfield is about 46 miles (74 km) west of the state capital of Columbus, Ohio. The 20 cars of the 212-car train derailed while traveling south, the Norfolk Southern spokesperson said.
Shawn Heaton told the Springfield News-Sun that he was waiting at the intersection as the train crossed the intersection and captured the start of the derailment on video.
“I was right there and I was playing on my phone and then I heard a loud bang. And when I heard the loud bang, I started recording,” Heaton said. “When I heard the bang, there was all kinds of debris and metal shoot out from under the cars and that’s when I started recording and you could see them start jumping off the tracks.”
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/norfolk-southern-springfield-ohio-train-derailment-7cd3b526a7c78ed17ad4bce0699720af
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So this train was twice as long as those in your area and probably that is typical of this particular freight line in Ohio. Which may be a part of the problem, excessive load on a system that is now looking like it's over stressed.
Some things I have been reading say that the current "best" type of rail configuration is in Japan that is used with high speed rail lines. Called SLAB Tracks. **
US switched from wood rail ties to concrete rail ties system, but they are still basically the same design, just tougher materials. Those upgrades are beginning to wear out and when hit with these longer, heavier freight trains it's bad enough that derailments are happening more often than tracks can be reinforced, repaired or updated.
SLAB Tracks are EXPENSIVE and in US mostly only used in RR tunnels.
SOLID SLAB Tracks are LESS subject to weather erosion as they aren't individual pieces surrounded by rain, snow etc, but large pieces designed to allow runoff and retain less water or snow that in turn lessens the chance of it breaking down the concrete.
** https://web.uniroma1.it/cdaingtrasporti/sites/default/files/Thesis_Orel_MTRR_14ott19.pdf
Abstract
Since the birth of modern railways, the desire for faster journeys has led to the emergence of the slab track railway system. Although the speed played a major role in the development of slab track, increased axle loads, and environmental concerns have also made slab track more popular today.
In this thesis, ballasted track and slab track systems are examined separately in terms of technical and economic aspects together with environmental impacts. Then, the two systems are compared and the advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed.
Finally, the “Life Cycle Cost Analysis” is developed for both systems to analyze their efficiency during their service lives. Results show that, slab track is not an attractive solution only at high speeds but also for high tonnages.
EDIT: Double negative = positive. Translated from Italian directly, but in essence..
Results show that slab track is NOT ONLY an attractive solution for high speed, but ALSO for high tonnages.
These railroads need to fix their equipment!
Fking robber barons still making our lives a nightmare!
our train was running 220 km/h.
I have a blurry shot
The US has been f*cked by capitalist a$$holes for the last 100+ years. When we lived in St. Joseph, MO (1988-94) we learned that at the turn of the century (1899-1900) there were 100 trains/day running through St. Joseph. The number of trains was reduced significantly when Kansas City developed itself to handle greater train traffic across the Missouri River. And then the horseless carriage took over and the development of rail passenger travel took a back seat to freight trains. BIG mistake for the country. Huge mistake. There were only very long freight trains--mostly Burlington Northern--running through St. Joseph when we lived there. My young sons used to love to go down to the river and watch/count the 100+ car trains go by.
is that nowadays, "right of way" ( "eminent domain" ) to get new tracks laid in a better configuration, has been next to impossible. I.e., people today don't want it "in their backyards" and will fight it in the courts and in the media.
That is the irony of today compared to yesteryear like here in PA where your wealthiest citizens lived "near the train tracks" just outside the city - e.g., the "Main Line" in Delaware and Chester Counties, PA.
I grew up about a block from a public transit commuter train route. When the trees were bare I could actually see the trains go by from my bedroom window and definitely could hear them year round. I rode them to school and work for about 8 years (other times I was on buses or drove - in the case of work, after they kept cutting the train schedule down more and more, ensuring it would take me twice as long to go to/from work than driving).
There will need to be quite a bit of finessing to get the mess fixed.
the government (at least here in PA) bought and/or owned the lots of land. However as the expansion happened within urban areas, little to no concern was given to residents and neighborhoods - particularly in black communities - which were completely bisected and cut off. The tracks themselves eventually became the perfect delineation for what became "redlining" to generate purposeful segregation and prompted use of the term "living on the other side of the tracks".
By Emily Badger and Darla Cameron
July 16, 2015 at 7:29 a.m. EDT
Like many metaphors, "the other side of the tracks" was originally a literal epithet. Blacks were often historically restricted to neighborhoods separated from whites by railroads, turning the tracks into iron barriers of race and class. In many cities, these dividing lines persist to this day — a reflection of decades of discriminatory policies and racism, but also of the power of infrastructure itself to segregate.
Look at racial maps of many American cities, and stark boundaries between neighboring black and white communities frequently denote an impassable railroad or highway, or a historically uncrossable avenue. Infrastructure has long played this role: reinforcing unspoken divides, walling off communities, containing their expansion, physically isolating them from schools or parks or neighbors nearby. Research, in fact, suggests that American cities that were subdivided by railroads in the 19th century into physically discrete neighborhoods became much more segregated decades later following the Great Migration of blacks out of the rural South.
(snip)
Segregation, in effect, has been built into the physical environment of many American cities, making it that much harder to undo. A century after many of those railroads were built, the pattern was repeated in a modern form: through the construction of even more imposing highways (many of which both destroyed and separated minority neighborhoods).
(snip)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/16/how-railroads-highways-and-other-man-made-lines-racially-divide-americas-cities/
Here in Philly, we had much more public transit in the past - between the buses and trolleys and subway and EL (that at one time had National Guard riding on them during a PTC strike because the "union" refused to have "negro workers" in 1944, prompting FDR to send troops here -
My mother was 14 at the time and would often mention her experience with that when riding the trolley.
Since the '60s and '70s, Nixon's "benign neglect" policy killed the transit systems while encouraging white flight to the suburbs where "the car was king". That was when the PRR and Reading Railroad eventually merged to become "Conrail", and was then taken over by SEPTA (which also had taken over PTC).
For public school, since there were no "yellow school buses" picking me and my sisters up at our front doors so we rode public transit (and after 3rd grade when I last was able to walk to school, I took public transit every year for the next 9 years and I was glad to be rid of it.
and especially to get some kind of sick leave provision. I think these recent incidents will bring a fresh perspective to the employees' obvious concerns.
These types of companies operate with the strategy to keep cutting until the system literally "breaks" and then take it back a notch and use that as normal operations. 
