I live near East Palestine and did a deep dive on their locality and Norfolk Southern in a two part series in my Substack. I think the corporate corruption stuff, and the friction amongst shipping demands, safety, and profit would surprise a lot of people!
By the way, I took a photo from the same spot you did!
I find your piece to be a good overview of the issues, though the particular way the train was loaded is interesting as well (heavy liquid in the front and rear with “squishy” low-vibration “stretchy” cars in the middle designed to carry automobiles without damaging them).
So they loaded the train wrongly making it such that they couldn’t safely stop it (probably their only option to keep schedule, for whatever reason that meant more than safety in the eyes of the suits watching risk).
If it’s easier to imagine, it was like trying to stop a toy train made of a bowling ball in the front, a bowling ball in the back, connected by rubber bands in the middle. Imagine a 30+ mile braking distance in a train 2+ miles long. That’s what happened in East Palestine. Some people call these “bomb trains,” and they’re more common than you think.
Thank you for a well researched and interesting article. I was not paying attention to the news when this story broke out, so this was a good outline of the issue for me.
Sorry for not being able to test the water!
I live near East Palestine and did a deep dive on their locality and Norfolk Southern in a two part series in my Substack. I think the corporate corruption stuff, and the friction amongst shipping demands, safety, and profit would surprise a lot of people!
By the way, I took a photo from the same spot you did!
I find your piece to be a good overview of the issues, though the particular way the train was loaded is interesting as well (heavy liquid in the front and rear with “squishy” low-vibration “stretchy” cars in the middle designed to carry automobiles without damaging them).
So they loaded the train wrongly making it such that they couldn’t safely stop it (probably their only option to keep schedule, for whatever reason that meant more than safety in the eyes of the suits watching risk).
If it’s easier to imagine, it was like trying to stop a toy train made of a bowling ball in the front, a bowling ball in the back, connected by rubber bands in the middle. Imagine a 30+ mile braking distance in a train 2+ miles long. That’s what happened in East Palestine. Some people call these “bomb trains,” and they’re more common than you think.
Thank you for a well researched and interesting article. I was not paying attention to the news when this story broke out, so this was a good outline of the issue for me.