well there is some logic to that although it falls to the wayside because of the tragedy. The fire department didn’t know what they were doing and turned it over to someone else who didn’t know what he was doing. SOP should be following up with phone calls to ensure the trains are secure. I’ve been through this in the heavy lift transportation business. I ended up annoying a lot people until I was satisfied a serious problem was addressed. In any business there is a lot of “that’s how we’ve always done it and nothing ever happened” mentality. Rarely do people like me make it to the top by pissing on other people’s cheerios.
There isn’t enough insurance money on the planet to cover stupid. All a governing agency can can do is pick a number for minimum liability and enforce it.
I disagree, possibly. What the Chairman said made sense IF rules weren’t followed:
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, MM&A chairman Edward Burkhardt called the TSB’s suggestions “reasonable,” but added that more regulation of the rail industry might not make a difference when the “vast majority” of accidents are caused by violation of an existing rule.
It “SHOULD” have been a simple process to secure the train. If procedures weren’t followed then all the regulations in the world are meaningless. I’ve been in air freight all my life. We use checklists for damn near everything yet 4 pilots including a check-ride pilot couldn’t figure out they were so far below the glide slope at SFO that they destroyed the plane and killed 3 people. This was something ANYONE in the cockpit could figure out and I’m not exaggerating. You can add "don’t fucking fly 100 feet off the ground on a half mile final"as a new regulation and it wouldn’t add anything to the current regulations. 4 people sat there and watched a plane crash.
Except one of the issues in this case may be the fact that MMA operated with a single crewman, and left the train unattended for hours at a time. That may require rethinking
I may be mistaken but I think they use 2 or 3 crew members on trains in the US. They still park them in my area when they run out of time. I assume they pick the locations because they are on level track but I have no clue.
There is nothing that shouldn’t be on the table regarding safety. One would think a mechanical blocking of the wheels is in order. Maybe a train expert can explain why this isn’t done. It’s SOP with aircraft.
I’m not a train expert, but I have driven a truck and had to learn an airbrake system. I’d suggest that blocking a train’s wheels is unnecessary for the same reason that a semi-truck’s wheels aren’t blocked: because the airbrakes are on. Technically, an airbrake system is known as a “Westinghouse safety brake,” where the key word is “safety,” because the system must be charged with compressed air in order to release the brake. An accidental or intentional loss of air pressure locks the wheels. For example, this loss of air pressure is the hiss you hear when a semi-truck parks, and the driver puts on the parking brake. That truck won’t move until the driver releases the brake (i.e. puts air in the system). As I said, I’m not a train expert, but the brakes (and the principles) are similar, so I’d imagine it’s the same with trains.
That being said, however, I know a railroader who tells me that it is common for trains to be parked on sidings that feature “derail” mechanisms. If the train moves accidentally, the derail knocks the engine and maybe the first car off the rails, stopping the train. It’s a pain to put it back, but it is better than having an unmanned runaway train. At any rate, derail mechanisms are what trains use instead of wheel chocks; but in this case, it is obvious that the train was not parked in front of a derail mechanism.
Any company I’ve worked for has blocked trailers at the dock.
So, a few developments:
Railways face higher insurance costs in review of Lac-Mégantic crash: the article indicates that the MMA was substantially under-insured to cover the costs of the accident:
Crude that exploded in Lac-Mégantic was mislabelled: officials
And on the environmental side:
Lac Megantic: Environmental report details extent of contamination
Stretch of MMA tracks deemed unsafe by Transport Canada:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/09/05/mma_railway_could_be_sold_by_january_trustee_says.html
Interesting that they’ve charged two managers as well as the company itself. Don’t know how much effect the charge against the company will have, since it’s in bankruptcy and then under new management.
Three accused released on $15,000 bail; townsfolk think higher-ups should be charged; Sûreté says not enough evidence; Crown has asked for more investigation.
Where is that amount of money going to come from?
I see from the article that plaintiffs have named a whole bunch of additional companies. Is that where they expect to find all that money?
From the article:
I assume from these statements that each of the companies named (or their insurance) is kicking in a portion.
Updating this thread, some recent information has come out placing more of the blame on corporate officials:
This is a reply to a a four-year-old posting.
That is not at all how the air brakes on a train work. The brakes are applied by compressed air in the brake cylinder pressing the brake shoe against the wheel. In Westinghouse’s original design, you simply applied the compressed air to the train pipe which distributed it to all the wheels. This was less than an optimal system because, among other things, if the train parted any air fed into the pipe would run out of the back without effect and you would have no braking power when you needed it the most.
OTOH, the “safety brake” would store the compressed air in an auxiliary reservoir on each car and, if the train pipe parted, the system would detect it and apply the stored air to the brakes and stop the train, both halves if necessary. That’s where the “safety” came from. Eight years ago I wrote this up in excruciating detail. Note that in neither case are the brakes released by applying compressed air.*
I did not mention in that post what happens when you park a car, or string of cars. A string of cars is dropped off and left at an industry. They were, naturally, stopped by the air brakes but the various seals leak. After a while, the air in the brake cylinder would bleed off and you have no more brakes. Train cars roll very easily so if there is the slightest grade, they’re going to roll off and have an adventure. For this reason, every piece of railroad rolling stock has a handbrake, a wheel or ratchet lever to apply the brake on at least one truck.
Here’s the kicker: The air brake is far tighter than any muscle power can apply it. A string is dropped off, Joe Newguy cranks the wheel until it stops, and he walks off, contented. The air bleeds off, all the brake rigging gets slack, and the string meanders off to have another adventure. Instead, the proper procedure is to first pull on a lever close to the brake cylinder to bleed off the air, then apply the handbrake. That way, you know the brakes will still be on when the air bleeds off, because you bled it off yourself.
Occasionally, this doesn’t happen which is why some sidings have derailers, and sometimes you have an adventure. While looking for an image of a brake wheel, I stumbled across the Canadian report which goes into exhausting detail on how that particular adventure occurred. Less adventuresome, here is a page detailing on how to keep a car being worked on in place; notice that chocks are used.
*I did belong to a railroad club that operated a 15-in. gauge railroad on about a half-mile of track. On that, the train length was limited to about a half-dozen cars and to release the brakes, air pressure was fed into the pipe which moved the brake cylinder against a spring that kept the brake applied. To move a car without a locomotive, you’d wind the sheel against the spring and keep in it place with a ratchet, exactly the opposite of the big boys.
I like the way you say, “…roll off and have an adventure”.
Sounds so jovial and benign. And in no way could flatten a little Canadian town. 
Sorta like how the medical folks use the phrase “death by misadventure” to describe something that was supposed to be fun but turned out otherwise. e.g. erotic auto-asphyxiation, and most serious Darwin Award attempts.
It sounds so much nicer than “an overdose of stupid with a side of unlucky.”
I still think the regulator who signed off on the one-man crew should also be prosecuted. Ever hear of fail-safe?
No, that’s what hot-dog pilots do.
Yup. A saying in USAF tactical aviation was “There’s no point in trying to fly real, real low. You’ll never break the record; only tie it. Zero feet is all there is and that record’s over a century old.”