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30 tons of explosives disappeared

864 Views 33 Replies 14 Participants Last post by  glenng6, 
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cowboystatedaily.com

30 Tons Of Explosive Chemicals Disappeared Somewhere Between Cheyenne And California

A railcar carrying 60,000 pounds of ammonia nitrate, a key material used in the bomb that blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, went missing from a railcar that left a commercial explosive facility in Cheyenne bound for California.
cowboystatedaily.com cowboystatedaily.com
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JeffHurl
Typical headline. Make it sound horrific, but when you read it, you're like, oh... BFD...😴

You read the headline, and you think "Oh, my Lord!" then you read the article and realize you just fell for the click bait.
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MichaelE
Called 'cllickbait'.
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All-Scale Railfan
Yep, we got Ja'baited. No offense to @Fire21, just the "article"...
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Old_Hobo
MichaelE said:
Called 'cllickbait'.
Click to expand...
Are there 2 L’s in clickbait….?
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JeffHurl
I don't know... Is there, or Are there?

Is L possessive of plural?

L's = possessive
Ls = plural

If you're going to critique someone, perhaps start with yourself. 🤣
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MichaelE
Drank my coffee too fast this morning.
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F
My point in posting this is twofold:

1. How are RRs allowed to lose such quantities of matereials? Don't they ever look?

2. In today's world, the disappearance of such quantities of potentially dangerous materials should raise some red flags. We've got terrorists crossing into our country almost daily it seems. Where exactly are those products going?
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Old_Hobo
JeffHurl said:
I don't know... Is there, or Are there?

Is L possessive of plural?

L's = possessive
Ls = plural

If you're going to critique someone, perhaps start with yourself. 🤣
Click to expand...
Just askin’….no need to go ballistic….
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JeffHurl
Sorry... I thought it was a joke. I can't control how you interpret it.
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M
Considering the trails and piles of leaked-out grain I have seen that has trickled out of hopper cars out here in farm country, I would suggest that there was slow steady leakage going on that got spread over a lot of territory. If the ammonium nitrate it was carrying was like the fertilizer product, it is small round white pellets, much smaller than many grain kernels are, so the chance of leakage is something to suggest. Small pellets as such would fall down into stone ballast and be quite inconspicuous.
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OilValleyRy
If a gate was slightly open and it leaked, you'd notice the open gate. I'm guessing "all the seals were intact" means the gates were all closed. I don't know what percentage of fully loaded 60,000 lbs is. 50%? 80%? But to the point, if it was a leaky gate, why did it stop itself leaking??? That seems fishy. At least from my armchair quarterback position.

More likely scenario IMO: Somebody at the facility did not fully load the car. Probably a shift change kind of thing. But the next guy just marked it as full, despite being a bit light.
Don't they weigh cars anymore with PSR?
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Old_Hobo
Fire21 said:
We've got terrorists crossing into our country almost daily it seems. Where exactly are those products going?
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It’s the home grown terrorists that are scarier….Oklahoma City anyone….?
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F
If it took 2 weeks to get from Cheyenne to California, that means it spent a lot of time sitting in one or various places. If it was leaking, there'd be piles of product that someone ought to have questioned!

redstate.com

30 Tons of Ammonium Nitrate Goes Missing From Train

What the heck was happening here?
redstate.com redstate.com
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S
Not good. Also how the first trade center attack happened.
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gunrunnerjohn
OilValleyRy said:
But to the point, if it was a leaky gate, why did it stop itself leaking??? That seems fishy. At least from my armchair quarterback position.
Click to expand...
The car was empty when it got to the destination, that would explain why the leaking stopping! :D
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JeffHurl
I saw an article yesterday that said it was likely a small leak and they found "one of the bays" empty.

There is so much misinformation out there today. You read the headline, and it sounds like a terrorist stole a bunch of explosives. Then you read the article and it's like not even a thing...
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J.Albert1949
I'm wondering if the covered hopper design used for these shipments had a "common compartment" or had two or more "bays" separated by partitions, into which the commodity was loaded?

If it has separate bays -- and if one of them "arrived empty", with seals intact, while the adjoining bays were filled...

... Could the car have been sealed and sent out, with one of the bays empty right from the source? Simply because someone failed to load it? And that mistake was overlooked by the loading department, and the car sealed up and shipped out anyway?

From the outside, a covered hopper doesn't look different loaded or unloaded, except for the truck springs being compressed. And if the car was partially loaded with one bay empty, even that wouldn't be noticeable.

Call it the occam's razor theory.
Maybe it arrived "empty" because it was shipped out that way.

Stranger things have happened on the railroad.
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OilValleyRy
J.Albert1949 said:
I'm wondering if the covered hopper design used for these shipments had a "common compartment" or had two or more "bays" separated by partitions, into which the commodity was loaded?

If it has separate bays -- and if one of them "arrived empty", with seals intact, while the adjoining bays were filled...

... Could the car have been sealed and sent out, with one of the bays empty right from the source? Simply because someone failed to load it? And that mistake was overlooked by the loading department, and the car sealed up and shipped out anyway?

From the outside, a covered hopper doesn't look different loaded or unloaded, except for the truck springs being compressed. And if the car was partially loaded with one bay empty, even that wouldn't be noticeable.

Call it the occam's razor theory.
Maybe it arrived "empty" because it was shipped out that way.

Stranger things have happened on the railroad.
Click to expand...
That's what I was thinking, human error/oversight. It didn't go missing because it wasn't there to begin with. Just my hunch though, based solely on what passes for journalism these days. I didn't notice a car capacity mentioned, but I'm pretty sure 30 tons is not fully loaded.
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M
miracleworker said:
Considering the trails and piles of leaked-out grain I have seen that has trickled out of hopper cars out here in farm country, I would suggest that there was slow steady leakage going on that got spread over a lot of territory. If the ammonium nitrate it was carrying was like the fertilizer product, it is small round white pellets, much smaller than many grain kernels are, so the chance of leakage is something to suggest. Small pellets as such would fall down into stone ballast and be quite inconspicuous.
Click to expand...
Actually I should elaborate. Based on experience, leaks as I have proposed can start and stop, based on various factors, maybe such as temperature of product, expansion/contraction of steel components, humidity, vibration of the machine, incline, wind, etc. These would make seeing a leak even more problematic.
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