Rich Tyler
Very slightly off-topic, but many years ago when in Railway Operations I used to work in an area through which we had a main traffic flow of petroleum and other oil-derived products from the refineries to oil terminals and distribution centres/storage areas. These generally passed in trains conveying 12 to 15 large 100-tonne tank wagons.
Obviously from time to time we would have to deal with an incident where for example the consignor had failed to secure a manlid or discharge pipe cover properly, sometimes we had leaks from the pressure relief valves, as well as small discharges from the various discharge pipes if the valves had not been closed properly.
We were thus very experienced at dealing with the emergency response to these trains given by the likes of the Shell, Esso, BP, etc, etc, technical people.
Through this we learnt that the myth of aviation fuel being highly dangerous was wrong.
Loaded aviation fuel tanks never bothered us because the flashpoint was so high and it required as well the fuel to be "misted" into the air through some form of airflow - such as the wagon travelling at speed. Obviously as we brought the train to a controlled stop, this hazard reduced exponentially. Even with say an axle bearing burning away, we were not too worried when it involved aviation fuel, because of, as I have said, the high flashpoint.
One of the staged demonstrations that the BR Fire Service trainers used to do was to try to set fire to a liquid pool of aviation fuel to demonstrate this. It is actually quite hard to do. You should have seen the look on those who were unaware !
Trains with running with petrol tanks however were another thing
