Last August, rail giant CSX Transportation and CHEMTREC, the 24-hour emergency call center, launched an effort to improve the information provided to emergency responders during rail-related hazmat incidents.

The new scheme, called the Network Operation Workstation, or NOW, gives CHEMTREC direct, instantaneous access to CSX's operations data so locations of toxic trains can be graphically identified anywhere on CSX's 21,000 miles of track.

CHEMTREC had access to this information before, but it was shared over the telephone or fax line, slowly and sometimes inefficiently. Now all the information is available in one tool.

“The NOW system takes train and car information in the CSX network databases and makes it available to the user through a point-and-click interface,” said Tom Murta, director of Infrastructure Protection for CSX. The system enables CHEMTREC to have direct information to hazmat car info. It improves response capabilities and streamlines the flow of information in the crucial early minutes of an incident, he said.

Under the new arrangement, CSX provides CHEMTREC staff with a Web-based visual display of the train and its location, the location of rail cars within the train, and the contents of each rail car. When a rail-related hazmat incident occurs on a CSX line, CHEMTREC can combine this information with its massive database of Material Safety Data Sheets and its ability to put responders in direct contact with manufacturers, shippers, product experts, toxicologists, chemists and physicians. All of these resources are quickly available by calling 800-262-8200.

“Impetus for the NOW system began in 2005 when the Federal Railroad Administration started looking for ways to enhance the ability of responders to get information regarding train consists,” said CHEMTREC director Randy Speight. “CHEMTREC and the railroads have had a long cooperative history of sharing information during an emergency. We've always been able to pick up the phone to any Class I railroad to get consist information during an incident.”

CSX is the only one of the seven Class I railroads so far to upgrade its emergency response information network. The others are Burlington Northern-Santa Fe, Grand Trunk Corp., Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, Soo Line and Union Pacific.

While the new NOW network promises to help emergency workers responding to toxic rail spills, it's unlikely to help lower the rate of rail accidents. In the past four years there have been more than 12,000 railroad derailments, according to Federal Railroad Administration figures — an average of one every three hours. CHEMTREC fields about 300 calls per day.

There are more than 240,000 tank cars in the North American railroad car fleet. Trains transport chemicals more than anything other than coal. According to the Association of American Railroads, approximately 1.8 million carloads of hazardous materials are transported by rail in the United States every year. Chlorine is a favorite. Domestic chlorine production reached about 13 million tons in 2004, most of it shipped by rail.

Union Pacific, the nation's largest railroad and largest hauler of chemicals by rail, estimates that roughly 5% of its shipments nationwide involve hazardous materials.

The new system was used most recently in January when a CSX train derailed in Brooks, Ky., 20 miles south of Louisville, rupturing three tankers containing cyclohexane. Cyclohexane is flammable and explosive and can affect the central nervous system if inhaled or ingested. Another tank car loaded with methyl ethyl ketone, a solvent that causes skin and respiratory irritation, also burned. Authorities evacuated everyone within a mile of the wreck as a pall of thick, black smoke spread across Brooks.