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You're blaming railroads for a lot of things they have no control over:

• Railroads don't classify the goods being shipped, shippers do.
• Railroads can't refuse to take dangerous goods. They're classified as common carries and have to carry anything that's allowed by regulation, including hazardous materials.
• Railroads do own older, less safe equipment, such as older DOT-111 tank cars and can reasonably be blamed for spotting the cars they own to industries shipping volatile chemicals. However, they cannot refuse to move cars delivered from other railroads, or leased by the industries. Furthermore, the factories making replacement vehicles are backed up for two years. Even so, railroads are replacing the cars they own. They are being responsible.
• Most rail lines were built in rural areas, and the cities grew up around them. Don't blame the railroad when a city builds up next to a transportation corridor that transports dangerous goods. In the cases where railroads have rebuilt outside of cities, the cities have again crowded around the lines. What do you expect railroads to do? They were there first.

The solution is to put hydrocarbons (and other dangerous liquid goods) in pipelines that are statistically far safer. Pipelines, carrying one a single product, can be routed far away from urban areas. But those in power refuse to allow it, in cases stalling for over half a decade.

Or blame the shippers, who purposely make their shipments more volatile and mislabel the contents.

Railroads can be blamed for runaway trains, like the one that got away in Lac-Megantic (a train that had safely passed through Toronto earlier). Derailments happen, despite the best efforts to prevent them (they cost a lot of money, so no railroad wants them). But most of the blame for the explosive situations that have resulted cannot be placed on the railroads: their hands are tied.

Do not despair, the article is here.

Correct link without the 501 error: http://www.canadianmanufacturing.com/designengineering/features/industryfocus/article.jsp?content=20090512_125904_8252