page_title: Petroleum transport
section_title: Rail cars
hierarchical_section_title: Petroleum transport / Methods / Rail cars
caption_attribution_description: This is a westbound Norfolk Southern Railway freight train in the late morning of 10 May 2016 at Horseshoe Curve, west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, USA. It was headed by two NS engines - # 9693, a General Electric CW40-9, and # 7211, a General Motors Electro-Motive Division SD80MAC. This tank car is Deep Rock Refining Company # 259091, marked DPRX. It was built in the 2010s and is used to transport petroleum (crude oil).
context_page_description: Petroleum transport is the transportation of petroleum and derivatives such as gasoline. Petroleum is transported via rail cars, trucks, tanker vessels, and through pipelines. Which method is used to move this oil depends on the amount that is being moved and its destination. The biggest problems with moving this oil are pollution and the chance of being spilled. Petroleum oil is very hard to clean up and is very toxic to living animals.
context_section_description: Tank cars are another way to move crude oil across a landmass. The oil is loaded into the tank cars, and are moved by a diesel train across the rails to the refinery or the train’s planned destination. Trains can carry a massive amount of this oil by using of multiple tank cars. Though each rail car holds a lot less oil than a large marine tanker vessel, when multiple are used a lot of oil can be transported. For example, the DOT-111 tank car is a very common tank car and can hold 131 cubic metres (820 bbl; 35,000 US gal). If ten tank cars were pulled the train would be carrying 1,310 cubic metres (8,200 bbl; 350,000 US gal) of oil, so the amount of volume increases rapidly. The locomotive used to pull these rail cars have a massive amount of horsepower and can be hooked up with other locomotives to increase the power, making the rail car a fairly cost effective way to move this oil. These rail cars, just like the pipelines, can be used to carry a refined fuel instead of crude oil from a refinery to a distributing plant. Rail cars are a common way to move this fuel a long distance to areas where they do not have pipelines set up.
caption: Tanker cars marked UN number 1267 - Crude Oil,  cross Altoona, Pennsylvania to a refinery
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