The horrific Norfolk Southern freight train derailment Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, near that state’s border with Pennsylvania, triggered — and continues to trigger — much-needed additional scrutiny throughout the railroad industry regarding the issue of dangerous cargoes.

Such cargoes always will be a reality within that industry; that is part of the basic nature of that transportation mode. What is concerning, however, is that there always should be a quick way to determine what a train is hauling, in the event of a derailment or other emergency or circumstance.

Full ability to make such an expedited cargo determination was not available Feb. 3, at least in part due to the seemingly snail’s-pace efforts up to then within the industry to implement such a capability.

Commendably, it appears that establishing such a capability industrywide might now be moving forward at a faster pace.

Railroad communities such as Altoona and Johnstown, and points east and west, obviously hope so. On Feb. 3, it took approximately 45 minutes for firefighters to learn exactly which chemicals were aboard the train.

At East Palestine, the chemicals transported made it too dangerous for firefighters to attack all aspects of the blaze directly; they had to pull back and contain some of the fire while the chemicals continued to burn.

Exactly what efforts firefighters had to employ to obtain the East Palestine train’s cargo list was not included in an Associated Press article published Sept. 21.

However, the usual ancient options that were available for firefighters to access that night in this otherwise fast-paced communications world involved tracking down the train crew to obtain a copy of the cargo list or reaching out directly to Norfolk Southern.

Regardless of how getting the information was accomplished after the derailment, precious time was lost in containing or otherwise getting the emergency under control.

As the Mirror has commented in previous editorials about the East Palestine derailment, one can only speculate how the situation would have played out if the incident had occurred along the downtown Altoona business district or the main railroad corridor through Johnstown.

The freight railroad industry apparently has begun making strides to escape the information “Dark Ages” — what could have been achieved about a decade ago if the industry as a whole had embraced steps launched at that time to modernize information availability.

Unfortunately, at that time, the response was anemic and, again unfortunately, the speed of acceptance even now is not what it should be. In 2014, railroads and emergency responders worked to develop the AskRail app that firefighters could download to their phones or to computers mounted in their fire vehicles. The response was not what it could and should have been.

New efforts began this year to beef up AskRail acceptance. Additionally, Norfolk Southern is working with the makers of what is called the RapidSOS software to otherwise enhance information access.

AskRail will allow dispatchers to look up everything a train is carrying as soon as they are given the number of just one of the cars.

That capability is part of the Association of American Railroads trade group’s push, launched in the spring, to sign up emergency dispatch centers for the program.

Avoiding another East Palestine-like situation remains on the railroad industry’s mind.

That is uplifting, although not providing any guarantees.