Fuel Spill at Selkirk Yard - 1/14/18

Major Fuel Spill at Selkirk Hump.
Fire Chief says cleaning up will require "digging".
From the Times Union.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 497874.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Dick H wrote:Major Fuel Spill at Selkirk Hump.
Fire Chief says cleaning up will require "digging".
From the Times Union.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article ... 497874.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Wonder how deep they intend to go... I'm sure there's more stuff in the ground than what was spilled in this incident..

2100 gallons of diesel is pretty bad. I didn't read in the article how the tank was punctured. They will have to dig down until they hit water/ice I think. Perhaps they should put membranes under the rail yards. With diesel you could "cook" the ballast & soil until the diesel burns or evaporates.

Dick H wrote:Fire Chief says cleaning up will require "digging".

shouldn't be that deep... ground's most likely still frozen from deep cold... that should prevent diesel from seeping deep into ground.

Below a certain level it doesn't freeze at all - but stuff will freeze to the ground.

10 years ago I was in an old auto junkyard and a crew was trying to crush cars in February and this one old Mustang came out of the ground with a 12 to 18 inch thick bed of dirt frozen to the bottom of it, almost like those HO resin cast junk cars a couple of companies sell.

lvrr325 wrote:Below a certain level it doesn't freeze at all - but stuff will freeze to the ground.

10 years ago I was in an old auto junkyard and a crew was trying to crush cars in February and this one old Mustang came out of the ground with a 12 to 18 inch thick bed of dirt frozen to the bottom of it, almost like those HO resin cast junk cars a couple of companies sell.

Right. Depend on how cold. but frozen ground should keep anything above until ground thaws... I'm just saying its not bad if ground's froze compare to summer time which they have to keep digging until they don't see fuel anymore.

once they start digging they will strike oil, decades of unreported spills

"once they start digging they will strike oil, decades of unreported spills"

Yeah, there is lots of stuff soaked down into the ground under those old diesel fuel stations...

When they first changed over to the diesels they had simple filling nozzles they stuck in the tank and opened a valve.... Then they went and did other stuff and came back later to shut the valve.... Whatever fuel the tank would not hold spilled onto the ground and kinda of sorta evaporated eventually.... Diesel fuel was dirt cheap so there was not too much concern about some being spilled on the ground...

Eventually they started to worry about wasting "expensive" fuel and installed valves that shut off when the tank was full (like at gas stations outside of New York State). And later they started to worry about cleaning up spills and capturing vapors...

Hope this does not turn into a copy of the TCE (Tri-cholor-ethane) spill from a LVRR derailment near Pavallion/Leroy NY in the 70's.... That one made some high school girls wacky just a few years ago.....

NYCRRson wrote:"That one made some high school girls wacky just a few years ago.....

not sure that takes much to begin with, but anyways...

Someone was on here looking for info on that spill not that long ago, I think they wanted to sue the railroad and had absolutely no clue that the company itself ceased to exist around 1982 once all the property not transferred to Conrail was disposed of.