The Canadian Pacific Railway, also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), was a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway was owned by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001.
The Canadian National Railway Company is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States.
A boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion is an explosion caused by the rupture of a vessel containing a pressurized liquid that is or has reached a temperature sufficiently higher than its boiling point. Because the boiling point of a liquid rises with pressure, the contents of the pressurized vessel can remain a liquid as long as the vessel is intact. If the vessel's integrity is compromised, the loss of pressure drops the boiling point, which can cause the liquid to convert to gas expanding rapidly. BLEVEs are manifestations of explosive boiling.
Milton is one of the seven train lines of the GO Transit system in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada. It extends from Union Station in Toronto to Milton, by way of Mississauga.
The Weyauwega derailment was a railroad accident that occurred in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, United States, in the early morning hours of March 4, 1996. The derailed train was carrying a large quantity of hazardous material, which immediately caught fire. The fire, which involved the train cars and an adjacent feed mill, burned for more than two weeks after the actual derailment, resulting in the emergency evacuation of 2,300 people for 18 days, including the entire city of Weyauwega, with about 1,700 evacuees.
A hot box is the term used when an axle bearing overheats on a piece of railway rolling stock. The term is derived from the journal-bearing trucks used before the mid-20th century. The axle bearings were housed in a box that used oil-soaked rags or cotton to reduce the friction of the axle against the truck frame. When the oil leaked or dried out, the bearings overheated, often starting a fire that could destroy the entire railroad car if not detected early enough.
The Waverly, Tennessee tank car explosion occurred at approximately 2:58 pm on February 24, 1978, in Waverly, Tennessee, following a train derailment incident days earlier. A tank car containing 30,161 US gallons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) exploded as a result of cleanup related to the derailment.
The Minot train derailment occurred just west of Minot, North Dakota, United States, on January 18, 2002, when a Canadian Pacific Railway freight train derailed, spreading ammonia gas across the city, delaying rescue operations. The cause was found to be small fatigue cracks in the rails and joint bars, not detectable by the inspection routines then enforced by Canadian Pacific.
The Toronto propane explosion was a series of explosions and ensuing fire that took place on the morning of August 10, 2008, in the Downsview neighbourhood of North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The explosions occurred at the Sunrise Propane Industrial Gases propane facility, located near Keele Street and Wilson Avenue around 03:50 ET. The blasts caused thousands of people to be evacuated from their homes and cost C$1.8 million to clean up, half of which was paid by the province of Ontario. An employee of Sunrise died in the initial explosions and a firefighter died of cardiac arrest the next day while at the scene.
The Viareggio derailment was the derailment and subsequent fire of a freight train carrying liquefied petroleum gas. It occurred on 29 June 2009 in a railway station in Viareggio, Lucca, a city in Central Italy's Tuscany region. Thirty-two people were killed and a further twenty-six were injured.
The Lac-Mégantic rail disaster occurred in the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada, on July 6, 2013, at approximately 1:14 a.m. EDT, when an unattended 73-car Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) freight train carrying Bakken Formation crude oil rolled down a 1.2% grade from Nantes and derailed downtown, resulting in the explosion and fire of multiple tank cars. Forty-seven people were killed. More than thirty buildings in Lac-Mégantic's town centre were destroyed, and all but three of the thirty-nine remaining buildings had to be demolished due to petroleum contamination. Initial newspaper reports described a 1 km (0.6-mile) blast radius.
In rail transport, the U.S. DOT-111 tank car, also known as the TC-111 in Canada, is a type of unpressurized general service tank car in common use in North America. Tank cars built to this specification must be circular in cross section, with elliptical, formed heads set convex outward. They have a minimum plate thickness of 7⁄16 inch (11.1 mm) and a maximum capacity of 34,500 US gallons. Tanks may be constructed from carbon steel, aluminum alloy, high alloy steel, or nickel plate steel by fusion welding.
The technical investigation of the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster looked into the instigating and mitigating factors regarding the incident, one of the deadliest in Canadian railway history, with 47 deaths. It identified 18 factors related to the cargo, maintenance of the tracks, maintenance and operation of the train, and weak government oversight all combined to produce the disaster. Five recommendations for change resulted from the investigation.
At 4:25 pm on July 8, 1986, a 44 car Baltimore and Ohio railroad freight train, traveling at 45 miles per hour, bound south to Cincinnati, derailed near Miamisburg, Ohio, a small city with an industrial history in Montgomery County, southwest of Dayton. Fifteen of the cars derailed on a bridge; these were tank cars containing yellow phosphorus, molten sulfur and tallow. Carrying a chemical used to make rat poison, fireworks and luminescent coatings, one tank car caught fire. This resulted in emission of an estimated 1,000 foot (300 m) high cloud of phosphorus. A subsequent incident caused the largest train accident-triggered evacuation at the time in the United States. The accident was the second major rail disaster in Miamisburg within an eight-year period. On September 10, 1978, 15 cars of a Conrail train derailed.
