Quebec derailment

ardmacha

Nasty.



A large swath of a Quebec town was demolished on Saturday after a train derailment sparked several explosions and a blaze that sent spectacular flames shooting metres into the sky.

Up to 1,000 people were forced from their homes in Lac-Mégantic, about 250 kilometres east of Montreal.

The freight train was driverless at the time of the incident, pulling away from a siding about 12 kilometres from the small town during a routine shift change.

A Dub in Glasgo

Very dangerous goods being carried with no fail safe mechanism for run aways - nasty indeed

Eiretrains

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

Very dangerous goods being carried with no fail safe mechanism for run aways - nasty indeed

Yes I wonder why the train managed to run away some distance, you would expect there would have been trap points or something to prevent such an occurrence.

zom

I know from people who live there that it was every day routine to transport that amount of fuel through the centre of the city. There was no prior concerns, unfortunately.

dowlingm

The line is operated by Montreal Maine and Atlantic, a subsidiary of RailWorld. The consist was 4 locos and 70 odd oil wagons carrying light crude from the Bakken field in North Dakota to an east coast refinery, about 3,500km. This is expensive but due to a lack of pipelines towards Texas the east coast price of oil is now significantly above the Gulf Coast price, so oil producers are shipping east. The engineer (single crew) parked the consist on the mainline having reached his hours of work, leaving one loco running to maintain air pressure.

What follows is subject to further clarification since the story seems to be changing rapidly.

There was a fire which was attended by the loco fire service who switched off the loco. A company employee attended but it's not clear what he or she did to check the train. The consist was on the top of a hill leading down into Lac-Megantic. The operating procedure was that the air brakes be backstopped by handbrakes set on a certain % of the wagons. The company has now suspended the engineer, accusing him of not having done this. The consist rolled away, separating from the locos and derailed on a curve in Lac-Megantic with horrific consequences.

I don't know which type of wagons were on this consist but there is a huge backlog of tank orders and type 111A wagons are in use which regulators have been trying to get phased out because they don't meet suggested crash standards.

The crash has been met with an amount of finger pointing - MMA's policy of using single manning was not popular and there's a general sense that the rail industry is underregulated, since they continually threaten abandonment or other mayhem if government require positive train control and what not. People who are pro and anti pipelines such as Keystone XL are taking stances based on rail being good / bad for more pipelines, plus you have the green movement who hates both rail and pipe because it means more oil rather than more conservation.

[EDIT: the 17 (so far) page thread on Railroad.Net is here]

ardmacha

Surely a parked unmanned train such as this should be on siding switched out from the main track, so even if it did move it could not go far and certainly not into town.

Edit: on railnet there is a quote
But someone managed to shut down the fifth locomotive unit, he said. The railroad alleges someone tampered with the controls of the fifth engine, the one maintaining brake pressure to keep the train stopped.
“If the operating locomotive is shut down, there’s nothing left to keep the brakes charged up, and the brake pressure will drop finally to the point where they can’t be held in place any longer,” Burkhardt said

surely the principle of the continuous brake has been around since the Armagh rail disaster 129 years ago!

Cookie_Monster

there were 5 locomotives, the one left running caught fire and was later shut down hence no brake pressure.
why are they not operating vacuum brakes at this point?

murphaph

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

there were 5 locomotives, the one left running caught fire and was later shut down hence no brake pressure.
why are they not operating vacuum brakes at this point?

I thought vacuum brakes are obsolete, air brakes being favoured.

I was under the impression that the brakes on a modern train are failsafe...the air pressure keeps the brakes "off" and with no air pressure, heavy springs force the brakes "on". Am I wrong here?

steamengine

murphaph wrote: »

I thought vacuum brakes are obsolete, air brakes being favoured.

I was under the impression that the brakes on a modern train are failsafe...the air pressure keeps the brakes "off" and with no air pressure, heavy springs force the brakes "on". Am I wrong here?

The following link explains how train air brakes work, click on the diagrams for releasing and application of brakes, rather than read all the bumph !!! It's all to do with the auxiliary reservoir and the triple valve. Yes, air pressure keeps the brakes off, and cunningly, a drop in air pressure causes the brakes to apply.

http://www.railway-technical.com/air-brakes.shtml

dowlingm

The company is employing an unbelievably poor PR strategy, all over the shop. All the while the fatality count is climbing.

ardmacha

steamengine wrote: »

The following link explains how train air brakes work, click on the diagrams for releasing and application of brakes, rather than read all the bumph !!! It's all to do with the auxiliary reservoir and the triple valve. Yes, air pressure keeps the brakes off, and cunningly, a drop in air pressure causes the brakes to apply.

http://www.railway-technical.com/air-brakes.shtml

This is what you would expect. But the reference above to locomotive implies that if the loco was turned off, then pressure was lost and the brakes were released, i.e. the opposite of the above.

flyingsnail

It’s not quite that simple. This article describes it better than I can but here is the short version.
(ignore the stuff above the bake pipe, I am just talking about the stuff below.)



Air from the Auxiliary reservoir is used to apply the brakes in the brake cylinder. It is the job of the triple valve to match the pressure in the Reservoir with that of the main brake pipe. So when air is released from the brake pipe the triple valve also released air from the reservoir which goes to the brake cylinder to apply the brakes.

The fail safe element comes in because if you lose the pressure in the main pipe the triple valve will match it by releasing the air from the reservoir, which in turn will apply the brakes.

The air in the brake cylinder can leak off and lose pressure over a period of time if there is not a supply in the reservoir to top it up. The reservoir is fed from the air in the main pipe, so a locomotive would need to be left running to keep a level of air in the pipe to keep the brakes applied.

Most modern passenger stock overcomes this by have some type of parking brake fitted, and freight stock tends to have hand brakes.

steamengine

That's it in a nutshell - there is no air to top up the reservoir that supplies air to actuate the brakes if the loco is shut down. So the brakes will fail safe ok., but for a certain period of time only, depending on the rate of leakage, however minimal.

SeanW

dowlingm wrote: »

The crash has been met with an amount of finger pointing - MMA's policy of using single manning was not popular and there's a general sense that the rail industry is underregulated, since they continually threaten abandonment or other mayhem if government require positive train control and what not.

If that really is a general sense then people generally have piss poor memories in North America. Prior to 1980, railroads in the United States were regulated under laws written in and for the 19th century, when railroads had serious power to abuse, versus the situation between WWII and 1980 when railroads faced serious competition from air travel, roads and new seaway canals.

As such the Northeastern U.S. is a graveyard of old railroad empires most notably the Penn Cental, which itself was a desperate last ditch bid by two dying roads (the Pennsylvania and the New York Central System) to try to economise and survive - but were stonewalled at all turns by 19th century regulations which had been strangling the Northeastern roads anyway. The private/freight railroad system would have continued to decline and finally collapse but for a package of measures that included the Staggers act of 1980 that deregulated the RRs enough that a renewed rail sector could thrive. Regulations need to be carefully considered recognising that regulation often equals strangulation. Extreme care should always be taken to ensure the benefits of the regulation seriously outweigh the risks of weighing down an otherwise profitable regulated entity.

Cookie_Monster

ardmacha wrote: »

This is what you would expect. But the reference above to locomotive implies that if the loco was turned off, then pressure was lost and the brakes were released, i.e. the opposite of the above.

this, I was confusing myself between the types, but the point I was trying to make is the system should be fail safe (as said above). If the loco power fails all the brakes should have been applied.

dowlingm

SeanW - Canada is a bit different, government played a bigger part. Shortlines becoming quite common as CN and CP shave off bits and bobs (and sometimes even buying back what they previously sold) whereas pre deregulation contraction was achieved by neglect with a view to abandonment. CN was government owned from inception in 1918 to 1992.

flyingsnail

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

this, I was confusing myself between the types, but the point I was trying to make is the system should be fail safe (as said above). If the loco power fails all the brakes should have been applied.

Which they probably did, the problem as I pointed out in my post above is that they don’t stay applied for ever, and slowly leak off. At the time the loco was shut down the brakes would have been on but they slowly leak air and release over time.

A Dub in Glasgo

Irrespective of the brakes, it was reckless stabling such a dangerous train on a gradient without the infrastructure diverting a run away from the town. You would swear catch points are not known about

TheBandicoot

I didn't realise that air in each carriage's brake cylinder is used to positively apply the brake. I thought the brake shoes were by default clamped onto the wheels and you needed to fill the cylinder with air to lift them and release the brake. That would be fail safe and is how I thought it worked.

ardmacha

With the carnage caused by this accident, there has to be a complete look at the rules for safety systems, you need catch points, handbrakes, alarms and other things besides.

flyingsnail

Owners of derailed Canada train file for bankruptcy

http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0808/466994-canada-train-crash/

The owners of a train that derailed in Canada last month leaving 47 people dead has filed for bankruptcy.

Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Ltd (MMA) filed for bankruptcy in the United States and Canada as it faces mounting pressure from authorities to pay for the disaster clean-up.

In court documents filed with the US Bankruptcy Court in Maine, the company said it was making the application to preserve the value of its assets for a potential sale.

The Quebec crash on 6 July was the worst of its kind in North America in two decades.

The driverless MMA train careened into the small town of Lac-Megantic, where it derailed, causing massive explosions and a wall of fire that obliterated the town centre and killed those in its path.

An estimated 5.6 million litres of oil were spilled.

As clean-up costs and lawsuits piled up, the company had hinted that it might opt for bankruptcy.

It has already scaled back operations and laid-off staff in both countries.

The Quebec government has ordered MMA as well as World Fuel Services, the company whose unit sold the crude oil the train carried, to pay for cleaning up the oil that spilled in the crash.

The municipality of Lac-Megantic has so far paid C$7.8m (€5.7m) to companies doing the clean-up and is demanding the railway pay it back.

MMA said total monthly revenues of its Canadian and US units had dwindled to about $1m since the derailment, given the closure of its main line between Quebec and Maine.

In a statement, MMA Chairman Ed Burkhardt said: "It has become apparent that the obligations of both companies now exceed the value of their assets, including prospective insurance recoveries, as a direct result of the tragic derailment at Lac-Megantic, Quebec, on July 6."

He said the company wished to work with authorities "in the continuing environmental remediation and clean-up as long as is necessary, and will do everything within its capacity to achieve completion of such goal".

The company said it had assets of between $50m and $100m and liabilities of up to $10m.

The court documents said the loss of much of the company's freight business occurred because Canadian authorities are not letting its trains run between Maine and Quebec.

MMA said it will continue to provide essential rail services in Quebec, Maine and Vermont and services to Lac-Megantic will be restored when authorities allow it.

However, Mr Burkhardt made clear earlier this week MMA would no longer transport oil.

dowlingm

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2013/08/08/quebec-lac-megantic-rail-train-disaster-mma-bankruptcy-court.html
What they have filed for now is bankruptcy protection for the Quebec operation and Chapter 11 (same thing) for the Maine operation. Hard to see how a winding up won't follow though - the insurers may cover the cleanup etc but this must be a huge commercial disruption and it's hard to see the RailWorld parent injecting the financing needed to keep it going through the lawsuits etc when they could just cut it loose.

flyingsnail

Canada is to shut down the rail operator whose tanker train blew up in a Quebec town last month, killing 47 people.

A government regulator today said the company does not have enough insurance to pay clean-up costs and other damages.

full article
http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0813/467958-canada-mma-railway-company/

dowlingm

Quality stable door bolting by CTA
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-transportation-agency-approved-mmas-coverage/article13706469/

Court documents filed by the company show that its insurance policy covers it for third-party liabilities of up to $25-million.

Faced with a cleanup bill the company estimates will exceed $200-million, as well as additional lawsuits from those affected by the crash, court documents make it clear that the insurance policy will scarcely begin to cover the fallout from the derailment.

In a quarterly report in the first week of August, MM&A’s insurance company revealed that the average short-line railroad in North America holds $32-million in insurance.

Insurer XL Group has so far declined to pay for cleanup costs because it says it wants to prioritize victims’ claims, leaving the province of Quebec to foot the bill.