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Margaret Anna Alice's avatar

You know they’re desperate when they’ve resorted to chemical warfare against civilians. They’re getting brazen. They’re getting reckless. This is how serial murderers get caught.

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ebear's avatar

"The woman in this video says there are hundreds of cars and that the say liquid odorless petroleum gas on the cars that are sitting really low on their axles. She also said that the locals said that the train’s presence is unprecedented. Locals know. That does imply that they are full."

This woman clearly knows nothing about railway equipment. There's no way to tell from just looking at a rail car whether it's loaded or not. She also wonders who owns them, but hasn't noticed the reporting marks that tell you who the owners are. You only have look them up.

https://www.railserve.com/aar_railroad_reporting_marks.html

You don't even need the chart, just punch the reporting marks into a search engine.

For example: SHPX: https://www.abbreviations.com/SHPX

You can track individual rail cars using the reporting marks to find out where they are, where they originated, what their cargo is, and who the consignee is. I'm sure if you ran those numbers you'd find they're empty in storage because there's a surplus of tank cars right now, and when that happens they are often stored on unused sidings on secondary lines. No way are those cars loaded, given the remote location. Tank cars are all privately owned these days so you couldn't insure them or their cargo under those conditions. Insurers would demand a more secure location.

If they're in 'odorless' service that means they haul from the wellhead to the refinery, where SH2 is added for safety. That's the rotten egg smell you get from gas products which are odourless and heavier than air, so the smell is added for safety reasons to detect any leaks.

https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Mercaptan

A few minutes on the web could have answered all her questions, or she could have just phoned the railroad and asked about it. Instead she gets alarmed based on an emotional response to a recent serious event and broadcasts that on the web, where it gets picked up and rebroadcast by others, without anyone looking into it any further than she did.

This is what happens when you combine fear and ignorance in a mass media environment. It distracts attention, plus it interferes with serious investigative work by making us all look like idiots.

Stay focused people. If something is outside your area of expertise, don't rebroadcast it, ask someone who knows, or look into it yourself. There's far too much at stake right now to be distracted by this sort of thing.

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