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Star Track® is a modular, composite railroad spill containment system built to catch incidental spills during railcar transfer, fueling, and maintenance. Each system uses three low-profile pans. Each pan is 4 inches high, 20 feet long, and about 10 feet wide:
Crews assemble Star Track with standard hand tools. Special fasteners and weldments hold the pans tight against the rail, so there is no excavation or concrete work. Pans connect for long unloading tracks or work on their own at a single fueling spot.
Captured liquid drains out through ports in each pan. An optional drainage manifold runs underneath all three pans and routes fluids to a drainpipe, collection drain, or sump pump. Filter boxes are also available for sites that need to separate oil from stormwater.
Star Track pans are made from strong, corrosion-resistant materials, including:
Star Track protects the track from the day it is installed and is built for outdoor rail environments. Benefits include:
One fuel handling customer needed to contain spills from four 20,000-gallon rail tankers of jet fuel. The site’s requirements called for 30,000 gallons of containment capacity, which is 150% of a single tanker, plus a way to manage rainwater. Polystar installed:
Installation took five days. Read the full railcar spill prevention success story.
Track pans protect the rail itself. Fuel tanks, drum storage, and generators beside the track need their own perimeter. Polystar’s Poly Dike MPE® containment berm works as a railway secondary containment berm around rail-side storage. It sets up on concrete, rocky soil, or uneven ground without anchoring.
Have questions about railroad spill containment for your yard or terminal? Our team can review your track layout and transfer points with you.
Good railroad spill containment starts with the right information. These resources cover track pan selection, transfer operations, and federal compliance in more detail:
Under 40 CFR 112.7(h), containment at a tank car loading or unloading rack must hold at least the capacity of the largest single compartment of any tank car handled at the facility. State or local rules can set a higher number, so confirm the requirement in your SPCC plan before sizing a system.
Each Star Track pan has drain ports that connect to a drainpipe, collection drain, or sump pump. Sites that discharge stormwater can add filter boxes or route the manifold to a clarifier that separates hydrocarbons from water before release.
Yes. Railroad maintenance facilities and fuel terminals use Star Track under fueling spots. The center pan catches drips between the rails, and the outrigger pans catch spills outside them. Pans extend in twenty-foot sections to cover the full fueling area.
Both. Star Track is fastened to the rail rather than cast in place. It can serve as permanent containment at a fixed fueling or unloading spot, or as temporary containment that comes out when a project ends.
Every rail yard has different transfer points, track layouts, and regulatory requirements. Polystar designs railroad spill containment around yours and manufactures it in the USA.