A railroad spokesman says there were no injuries and no spills in Tuesday’s minor derailment of an empty oil train in Ulster County that was heading to Chicago from Philadelphia.
A CSX statement says one of three engines and one car carrying sand derailed in the town of Ulster around 9:30 Tuesday morning. It says the train had 97 empty cars that had carried oil and two cars filled with sand. None of the train's cars tipped over. Railroads have seen a major increase in oil train traffic hauling crude from North Dakota and western Canada to refineries along the East Coast. A series of derailments and spills, including one in Quebec that killed 47 people, has raised public safety concerns.
In fact, the Quebec explosion is one in a string of derailments and train fires since the summer that prompted federal regulators to issue an emergency order requiring tests of crude oil before shipment by rail. The Federal Railroad Administration said Tuesday it also is prohibiting shipping oil using the least-protective packing requirements. Shippers already had to classify oil shipments based on their risk for explosion or fire, but federal investigators found that many shipments were being misclassified as less dangerous. The order requires testing for classification before shipment.
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