RAIL-GUARD Rail Car Containment

Your Best Option for Railcar Containment

When dealing with railcars, you need to be prepared for large—potentially catastrophic—spills. One pipe break can release more than 1,000 gallons per minute (gpm). Our RAIL-GUARD containment systems have you covered. 

It’s the highest degree of protection for containment of rail cars, created by us and available for you. If you’re in the ethanol or agriculture industry, this could be the containment system you need to protect the environment and your investment.

Product Specifications

We use G115 corrugated steel with various geosynthetics, including a geomembrane liner. The system is built under your existing tracks, using the ground as a support system. 

RAIL-GUARD is designed to have a flow rate of 1,500-2,000 gpm. As a result, you can rest assured that you’re protected against railcar spills.

Key Benefits

The RAIL-GUARD system was first designed to help a customer who had already experienced a complete rail car release. The customer had a plastic pan system in place, but it couldn’t keep up with the speed or volume of the spill. 

We went to the site and, in four days, had designed and installed a custom railcar containment system underneath the customer’s existing tracks. Since then, we’ve been helping other customers who want to protect themselves from spills before it’s too late. 

We’ll come to your loading site and design a system, based on that original concept, that we can install without disrupting your operation.

Why choose RAIL-GUARD?

This system’s design is completely unique to J.C. Ramsdell. After years in the business, we noticed a need for railcar containment systems capable of containing a catastrophic failure. So we made one.

Unlike drip pan systems, which don’t have capacity for large spills, J.C. Ramsdell’s RAIL-GUARD can capture and hold a complete railcar release: 30,000 gallons.

They also save you money. These systems maintain whatever product is spilled, which means you can reclaim it, and spares you the expense of an environmental cleanup.

Rail-Guard Installation

Systems can be designed to contain an entire rail car, or be piped to a remote basin.  In the below application, we installed the rail containment under two new load-outs, prior to the rail installation.  Systems were then piped to a remote holding basin.