Comments on: The Lac-Megantic Incident, It’s All About The Brakes

By: Mike Gough

Mike Gough — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 02:10:52 +0000

I just recently rehashed over several sources on this rail tragedy. 47 needlees deaths. The TSB Transportation Safety Board inquiry was very lax in not concluding one operator trains were an accident about to happen. In followup the CBC reporter said to our Transport Minister so what has changed. Right away she ducks behind well enough manually applied hand breaks were not set by the solo train engineer. Shes a lawyer and should have read the TSB report. The MMA manual called for 9 to be set and he set 5 to 7 and that is the root cause in her one-track mind. And the locomotive? Well it went past a Transport Canada unexpected safety check. Spewing oil out the stack and running like crap. Oh it was patched many days before internally before with 10 minute epoxy. And that or more brought of a dead cyliinder, motor surging and oil pooling in the mega hot turbo casing. The cause of the engine loco fire and the unintendex shut-down. Hmmm Must have been one of those deaf and blind TC safety inspectors they hire! And good god the cab driver who comes to drive the LE to hotel for some rest. He and the LE discuss just how crappy the loco engine is running while tbe stack spews globs of oil onto his taxi. Holywood could not dream up a better pre-disaster story. The LE had 5 other engines he could have used to leave idling and air powering the train brake line. But what we are not told is they had so many control circuit faults etc he was forced to rely on the lead engine that ran like crap hjs entire trip. For some slimeball insanely cheap RR owner to save bucks. And TC the TSB and our bought off politicians are so alouffe its gonna happen again somewhere in Canada. What has changed

By: Larry

Larry — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 23:48:28 +0000

Most sidings I’ve scene have a permanent derail to prevent equipment from entering the main line. Even some CTC have them circuited in.

My experience with the railroads, there liars.

The MM&A was most likely negligent.

There should have been a special instruction relating to winding extra hand brakes on un attended trains.

The heavy crude trains are new, the one man crew is new.

They may have been using that siding for a hundred years and just started leaving heavy trains unattended as part of new operations.
This is the first time the air dropped, when the engine was shut
down.

Think about it, 2012 they got the OK for a one man crew.
That’s negligent in itself.
How can one guy secure the train and walk it, if he hits on a hot box detector or looses air, has to stop in route. Pretty cold up
there too.
A walk along 72 cars on some frozen starry night can be a cure for a railroad buff. Fifty cars can get you mugged in Chicago too.
Technically one guy can’t secure a train by himself anyhow. Because the engine is unattended until he wraps the correct number of brakes.

My first clue is when the CEO blamed the engineer. Then the company spokesman blamed the fire department.

Its obvious they were cutting corners with the inadequate crew. The bottom line is the biggest deal in the world to a lot of these dopes.
They probably took a fraction of what they saved and got hooker’s for the TSA officials at they Safety Summit Convention in Vegas.

But like a whipped cream bikini it just wont stick.

They will hang the engineer and everyone will be pretty much OK
with it.

By: ant6n

ant6n — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 21:52:48 +0000

In reply to Peter Laws. couple of breaks slipped through...

By: Peter Laws

Peter Laws — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 21:04:45 +0000

Nice summary. Media coverage has been pretty bad as noted. The Canadian Class Is have supplemental hand-brake rules as part of their own rule book. TSB has an example of CN’s here: http://www.bst-tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/rail/2012/r12e0004/r12e0004.asp Note that they have specific rules for trains tied down on grades. I’ve googled around for an MM&A ETT or System Special Instructions without much luck.

You mentioned the one-man crew issue. I think that’s significant. I also want to know more about crew rest. I’ve not seen Transport Canada’s hours of service regulations but I imagine they are similar to the FRA’s, 12 hours maximum on duty, so many hours rest before they can be called again, etc. It will be interesting to see how well rested the “crew” was.

Oh, yeah: break != brake

By: Richard Mansour

Richard Mansour — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 03:03:51 +0000

Thanks for posting this. The disaster was (as usual) lazily reported in the Australian press, leaving a thoughtful reader with more questions than substantive information, and your blog has clarified several points. I agree strongly with your concluding remark about the hazardousness of leaving long, heavy freight trains unattended on inclines without some rock-solid means of stopping it moving (or perhaps an alarm system to alert the train company and emergency services of a spontaneous launch into motion).