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In rail transport, the U.S. DOT-111 tank car, also known as the CTC-111A in Canada, is a type of unpressurized tank car in common use in North America. Tanks built to this specification must be circular in cross section, with elliptical, formed heads set convex outward. They have a minimum plate thickness of and a maximum capacity of . Tanks may be constructed from carbon steel, aluminum alloy, high alloy steel or nickel plate steel by fusion welding. ==Usage== Up to 80% of the Canadian fleet and 69% of U.S. rail tank cars were DOT-111 type, as of 2013.〔 DOT-111 cars are equipped with AAR Type E top and bottom shelf Janney couplers designed to maintain vertical alignment to prevent couplers from overriding and puncturing the tank end frames. Many of these transport a wide spectrum of dangerous goods, including 40,000 cars in dedicated service carrying 219,000 car loads of ethanol fuel annually in the U.S.〔 Hydraulic fracturing of new wells in the shale oil fields in the interior of North America has rapidly increased use of DOT-111 cars to transport crude oil to existing refineries along the coasts. The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway runaway train in the Lac-Mégantic derailment of July 2013 was made up of 72 of these cars, some of which ruptured, releasing explosively〔(CBC "Lac-Mégantic marks 1 month since deadly train explosion" story )〕 their cargo of Bakken formation light crude oil, resulting in a large fire and mass casualty event. A November 2013 derailment near Aliceville, in Pickens County, Alabama involved a similar explosion of North Dakota crude oil. The Genesee & Wyoming company was the carrier for this 90-car train, of which 20 derailed and exploded. The train originated in Amory, Mississippi and was scheduled for a pipeline terminal in Walnut Hill, Florida that is owned by Genesis Energy. The final destination for the shipment was to have been the Shell Oil refinery in Mobile, Alabama. The accident happened in a depopulated wetlands area. Three cars experienced a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion.〔(Reuters: "Train carrying crude oil derails, cars ablaze in Alabama" 8 Nov 2013 )〕 On 30 December 2013, a similar explosion occurred in Casselton, North Dakota causing the town to be evacuated. The BNSF train was 106 cars and 1.6 km long, of which at least 10 car were destroyed. Reports were that another train carrying grain derailed first, causing the adjacent Bakken formation cars to derail.〔〔(cbc.ca: "North Dakota train derailment, explosion, prompts evacuation from town" 30 Dec 2013 )〕 Three days later, the USDOT PHMSA〔(G+M: "U.S. will have answers in weeks on crude-by-rail mishaps, regulator says" 8 Jan 2014 )〕 wrote that “Recent derailments and resulting fires indicate that the type of crude oil being transported from the Bakken region may be more flammable than traditional heavy crude oil... Based on preliminary inspections conducted after recent rail derailments in North Dakota, Alabama and Lac-Megantic, Quebec, involving Bakken crude oil (mandate crude producers and shippers to ) sufficiently degasify hazardous materials prior to and during transportation.”〔(G+M: "U.S. issues warning over Bakken-sourced oil" 2 Jan 2014 )〕〔(DOT PHMSA "Safety Alert: Preliminary Guidance from Operation Classification" )〕 The oil regulator for North Dakota stated in early December 2013 that he expected as much as 90 per cent of that state's oil would be carried by train in 2014, up from the current 60 per cent.〔 The number of crude oil carloads hauled by U.S. railroads surged from 10,840 in 2009 to a projected 400,000 in 2013.〔 In the third quarter of 2013, crude-by-rail shipments rose 44 percent from the previous year to 93,312 carloads, equivalent to about 740,000 barrels per day or almost one tenth of U.S. production.〔 That was down 14 percent from the second quarter of 2013 due to narrower oil spreads that made costlier rail shipments less economic.〔 The US NTSB had approved the Industry proposed guidelines from the AAR about DOT-111 tank cars in March 2012 as a result of the 2009 incident in Cherry Valley, Illinois (described below) but it took until May 2014 before the PHMSA division of the Department of Transportation, which regulates the industry, approved those standards. As of March 17, 2015 the OMB is still evaluating those standards before allowing them to become the new accepted standards. The new proposed tank car is called CPC 1232. It has thicker and stronger steel, is double walled and thermally insulated and includes better valves, tank lids and braking mechanisms. There have been so many slight variations proposed that a consensus has not yet been agreed upon by the various governmental agencies involved. Meanwhile, the railroad industry has placed billions of dollars of orders for new tanks cars, which can't be filled while these standards have been assessed during the last five years. On 7 January 2014, 17 cars of a 122-car train derailed and exploded near Plaster Rock, New Brunswick. Nobody was injured but about 150 people were evacuated.〔(G+M: "Train carrying oil and propane still burning after derailment in New Brunswick" 8 Jan 2014 )〕 The petroleum products originated in Western Canada and were destined for the Irving Oil Refinery in St. John.〔(G+M: "New Brunswick train derailment fire renews questions of oil-by-rail’s dangers" 8 Jan 2014 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「DOT-111 tank car」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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