Cheaper to respond once in a while than to prevent fleet wide. Capitalism alone settles on cost efficacy.

Maintenance teams are discouraged from marking trains and rails for maintenance because delays impact profits.

https://www.propublica.org/article/railroad-safety-union-pacific-csx-bnsf-trains-freight

Bradley Haynes and his colleagues were the last chance Union Pacific had to stop an unsafe train from leaving one of its railyards. Skilled in spotting hidden dangers, the inspectors in Kansas City, Missouri, wrote up so-called “bad orders” to pull defective cars out of assembled trains and send them for repairs.

But on Sept. 18, 2019, the area’s director of maintenance, Andrew Letcher, scolded them for hampering the yard’s ability to move trains on time.

“We’re a transportation company, right? We get paid to move freight. We don’t get paid to work on cars,” he said. “The first thing that I’m getting questioned about right now, every day, is why we’re over 200 bad orders and what we’re doing to get them down. … If I was an inspector on a train,” he continued, “I would probably let some of that nitpicky shit go.”

Not to mention, in theory, moving something on a fixed track seems safer than any other alternatives we have. WAY safer than by truck or by plane.

If only we didn't have such an outdated and monopolized rail in this country. THAT is what makes it unsafe. Capitalism.

OK, it will cool down eventually and leave a mess that would probably a nightmare to remove, but at least no poisonous fumes, that's right.

Just imagine you have a tight spot on the map full of industry. You need to expand, but there simply is no space around the existing site. But you cannot move the original site, as it is vital to be next to the harbour. So you have to open a second site somewhere else and get the logistics right.

So just like wheat and flour moves from the farmer to the mill and on to the baker, they moved liquid steel from the blast furnaces to the foundry and rolling mill.

The original plant with the blast furnaces is directly at the harbor. As this site is surrounded on all sides with other industrial zones and the cities themselves, they built new foundries and rolling mills on a second site. They get (or got, IDK) the liquid steel delivered in rail cars designed for this one purpose. Obviously they are heavily insulated, so they are "just warm" on the outside.

I have to admit that my knowledge of this is old, I don't even know if the blast furnaces are still running there...

Regan probably had a hand in 9/11 at this point, it's the only thing that makes sense, lol.

This is not a safe standard, because it allows more total incidents if there is more mileage. The goal should be as few incidents as possible regardless of the amount of rail. You are doing what your insurance company does to you and your family.