Today, the rail administration says it lacks enough evidence that long trains pose a particular risk. But ProPublica discovered it is a quandary of the agency’s own making: It doesn’t require companies to provide certain basic information after accidents — notably, the length of the train — that would allow it to assess once and for all the extent of the danger.
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In the absence of data, the industry insists that long trains have actually helped to improve rail safety, pointing to an overall decline in derailments. The Association of American Railroads, the industry lobby, says safety is the priority when building long trains and notes that regulators have never cited length as the direct cause of an accident. The nation’s seven largest rail companies, the so-called Class 1s, echo these points, defending their safety practices and saying that PSR has led to fewer problems.
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The reports revealed that some long trains were too big to fit into sidings off of main tracks that were often built to accommodate trains no longer than 1.4 miles, and passing trains were crashing into their rear ends. It happened in September 2005 when a 1.5-mile-long BNSF train tried to fit into a siding in Missouri that was 1.4 miles long. The same thing happened the following year in Utah to a 1.5-mile-long Union Pacific train.
The hulking trains could generate forces powerful enough to break the heavy-duty materials their cars were made of. In March 2008, the rear end of a 1.5-mile-long BNSF train ran forward as the front of the train decelerated, sandwiching the train and cracking an old repair on a tanker car. The train broke in two in Minnesota, dumping 20,000 gallons of ethylene glycol, commonly used in antifreeze, into a tributary of the Mississippi River.
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