Canadian railways to replace or fix older tank cars

MONTREAL —Canada’s two largest railways will phrase out or retrofit their own small fleets of older DOT-111 tank cars — the kind involved in the horrific explosion and fire in Lac-Mégantic, Que., last summer.

Canadian National Railway said Tuesday that over the next four years it will stop using DOT-111s, of which it has 183, for transporting internal supplies of locomotive diesel fuel as part of a move to improve rail safety.

The Montreal company plans to invest $7 million this year to replace all 40 tank cars it owns and will gradually replace the remaining 143 cars as their leases expire.

“For CN, tank car design is one of the most important systemic issues arising from the Lac-Mégantic accident,” CEO Claude Mongeau said. Last summer’s railway crash killed 47 people in southeastern Quebec.

He said tank car robustness is a central question.

Canadian Pacific Railway said it was in the process of retrofitting the fewer than 200 tank cars that it uses.

“We’re actively finalizing a plan to retrofit the older tank cars in our internal fleet to safer standards and that’s something we’re moving on immediately,” Ed Greenberg, a CP spokesman, said.

The Calgary-based railway is finalizing the repair schedule. No cost estimate was immediately available.

Canadian investigators have reported that 60 of 63 oil-laden cars that derailed in Lac-Mégantic last July 6 “released product due to tank car damage.” All were oldermodel DOT-111s.

The Association of American Railroads has recently recommended the retrofitting or phase-out of the old DOT-111 cars and a reinforced standard for new tank cars.

The DOT-111 tank car is considered the workhorse of the North American fleet and makes up about 70 per cent of all tankers on the rails. The cars have a service life of between 30 and 40 years.

Since October 2011 all new tanker cars have been built to safer specifications. But there is a long backlog on new car orders because there are only a handful of manufacturers in North America.

A government-commissioned report has said there are about 228,000 DOT-111 cars in service throughout North America, with about 92,000 of them carrying flammable liquids.

About 26,000 of the reinforced models have been put into service and that’s expected to rise to 52,500 next year.