Oil train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Québec 07-06-2013

As of Monday, the tourist train Orford Express was to bring visitors to Lac-Mégantic and its pristine surroundings, which were left unscathed by the explosion that devastated the town’s centre on July 6. Close to 5,000 tickets have already been sold for trips in the coming days. But late Friday, Transport Canada ordered the shutdown of the railway between Lennoxville and Lac-Mégantic. The department requested a more thorough examination of the rails and repairs after the inspection it carried out on Thursday.

Isn't that something! Transport Canada, at the very last minute, finds all kinds of trouble with this track and stops this tourist train operation. How come they "ignored" their statutory authority to oversee operations on this line, and of the MMA company, and to see if all the safety rules and regulations were being followed.............for months, and years, before and up to the Lac Megantic disaster.

Bureaucracy is always the same. Show up AFTER the disaster............. and regulate the snot out of everything in sight.

SRM

gokeefe wrote:Discussion of causality is one thing but making it personal to the individuals involved risks a number of things to include potential slander.

That's why I said discussion needs to be plainly identified as speculation, and I also noted we should avoid making statements that a given person or persons actually did or caused something.

In the case of criminal charges there is always the potential to unwittingly taint the jury pool based on discussions here that have no foundation in the forensic evidence (because it isn't publicly known).

LOL! I highly doubt any discussion on this forum would taint a jury pool. And - at least here in the US - during selection potential jurors are asked whether they have read or heard anything that could possibly interfere with their ability to render an impartial verdict, or something to that effect. It would be incumbent on an individual to answer that he/she had read discussion on Railroad.net which makes him think he already knows the answer. We should not be muzzled from discussion and speculation on that very remote possibility.

There has been so much information, disinformation, speculation, baloney and BS given forth in the media, both from the reporters and from various municipal and corporate representatives, and anything we say on here seems tame by comparison. I applaud the mods for allowing us to hash it over, and I personally go out of my way to be sure I use terms like "for example" or "one possibility could be..." and other things to indicate I'm giving my own unofficial ideas. I briefly looked into another thread elsewhere, regarding a different derailment, in which the mods there rigidly forbade any speculation or discussions of a possible cause. Upon seeing that, I lost interest and have not been back to that site since.

Everyone: The CBC has voted the Lac-Megantic Oil Train disaster its top news story of 2013...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ ... -1.2476212" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I will also add that in the aftermath of this disaster that this should end any thought of one-person train crews as a cost cutting measure...

MACTRAXX

If there were some means at this site to prepare a posting today, and submit it for display at a future date - which in this case would be when the Canadian rail safety investigative agency releases their report regarding the incident - I'd 'let loose' with my speculations. Let me assure all, there would be persons and/or parties noted beyond any suggested here to date.

Possibly, Mr. Maine Central may step forth and offer to be 'trustee' for any submissions those here might choose to make. The 'trustee' would hold such in abeyance until the Report is released, and at that time, post any of such. It would be interesting to see who was closest to the safety agency's causes and recommendations.

CN9634 wrote:Well for what it's worth, from what I understood of a conversation I had with someone, the problem with Irving wasn't the Moosehead not being profitable (with overhead traffic) but the town of Lac Megantic and the politics surrounding that. They want to ship crude by rail again... and a lot of it. They didn't want to deal with the politics of connecting the line back together... however if you notice, Keach and Co pushed back the date of the auction about a month. All while this was going on, they also connected the line back to the Industrial park, while veeeerrryyy quietly connecting the two halves again. When they ran the first train to Tafisa, well what do you know, they also ran a lite power move to and from Maine. The residents won't know the difference anyways... early January is the next move across Maine and from what I'm told, dry goods will return. The deal with the MMA and the Town of Lac Megantic is specifically written that it is non-binding for the next owner of the line. I think once they start running trains (MMA will run the line until March 14th, the date the transaction is scheduled to be complete), people will be less hesitant to the trains coming back.

The long and short of this is that, Irving may very well change their mind. My conversation took place before the two halves were reconnected and from what was understood, we thought that wouldn't happen for quite some time. Keach knows the value of the Moosehead is only if the two parts are connected again so I believe he made it a priority and now the line is much more marketable. Only time will tell now and we will know by Jan 21st what happens.

cn9634 good post. the rail crude move is hugely profitable. i'm sure irving recognizes that so i'm confused by any mention of other traffic needed to support an irving purchase. to reflect- irving outputs 300k barrels/day. if all rail, that's 4000+ cars/day, 40 trains. one every 36 minutes. impossible with the existing trackage. but look at the powder river trains. can the reluctance really be the legal overhang? given the current $14/barrel transportation costs, there is investment available to create trackage, by-pass lac megantic and create a fund for lac megantic civic needs. ken patrick

Ken, you missed a decimal. It is more like 400 cars a day. And then you have to take into consideration that the refinery is set up to handle a certain crude spec... and that can involve buying from overseas sources as well as Bakken and Canadian oil sands. And Bakken /Canadian crude can move a variety of ways. Irving is not beholden to the Moosehead.

C'mon. Rebuilding the main has never been in doubt. And, again, if it was so strategically important, it seems farfetched that Irving would say "little ol' us don't want to fight that battle, but we sure hope someone else does! "

Uh-oh, the lawyers preparing a class action suit on behalf of the Megantic residents have uncovered quite a bit of evidence that the oil gang in North Dakota and the Irving's were playing fast and loose with the Haz-Mat rules regarding informing the rail carriers about the volatility of the product being shipped. Quite a bit of legal wrangling ahead. While the MMA is included in the suit it seems ,from my brief read, that yes they caused a train wreck it cant be proven that anybody died as a result of the wreck it self. Apparently liability points to the volatility of the oil as the principal factor in the fatalities. I guess the hair splitting will go on for years.... go to the Railway Age website if anybody wants to read the article.

cowford- i used 74 barrels/railcar and 300k barrels/day.should have used 750 barrels/railcar.
my thinking before this incident was that crude by rail was the equivalent of the powder river rail moves. as for irving spreading their needs around, that is a reflection of costs. bakken adjusts to the market but is always less than brent. ship transportation via the gulf will always be more expensive than rail. if i ran mma, the price would always be less than ship. i would lock up the move and get investment to assure a smooth operation. what is sad is that mma management tried to correct years of losses with penny-pinching this wonderful piece of business. i would hope someone at a business school will write this up. ken patrick

Basicly,the MM&A was not prepared for the business,may have not totally understood the cargo(crude oil) and how to
handle it,and "jumped" into the business "head first",only looking at the $$$ to be made.

When it comes to Haz-Mat,the shipper has to certify the shipment(it is crude oil),the carrier has to determine if the material is safe and legal to
ship,the packaging(tank) is correct,proper placarding(over 1,001 lbs)and if the tank(rail/trailer) is current on all it's required inspections,
is the route is safe and in good condition for this shipment(locos,track,and crews),have all the required info needed for 1st responders
in case of emergency,and how to handle the shipment SAFELY.

MM&A may have been behind on track maintance + inspections,loco maintance + inspections,crew training on how to handle
a unit train of tank cars,possible lack of communication/training to the 1st responders along the route about the shipments.

Well the irony of the entire situation is... the C30s were for sale a few months before and the MMA was actually shopping around for new power. Had they picked up some new units (They were looking at ex-UP C40-8s), it is entirely possible this whole disaster wouldn't have happened... as the first event in the long series of unfortunate events was an engine fire in the old C30. I don't think it was deferred maintenance at all as the folks at Derby do a heck of a job keeping the power moving. But I'm not sure they were alloted the resources (IE new or remanufacturered parts compared to old used ones) from management to properly fix things. Really, if any other unit had been the leader this whole situation probably would have been avoided....

Back the regularly scheduled discusion.

I still have concerns about that theory (no offense to my friend CN9634). Even if the lead unit had been brand new, fresh from the factory, I believe that this disaster still could have happened. Let's say the lead unit was running and the trailing units were shut down, as was the case at Nantes that night. Now let's say that the computer in the lead unit detected a fault somewhere in the system and it shut the unit down in order to prevent damage. This happens sometimes, even when there's nothing actually wrong (the computer tends to be overly cautious). Now all of your units are offline and no air is being provided to the train. Now you're in exactly the same scenario as what happened at Nantes due to the insufficient number of handbrakes that were applied to the train, and the fact that it apparently didn't occur to anyone on the scene to start up one of the trailing locomotives to take over the air duties formerly handled by the lead locomotive.

mec407 & utuconductor- as i posted many times, dump the air. (all brakes on for hours). call the new 'crew' earlier. (in the motel waiting for train), have the re-crewing done in town not 9 miles away on a hill. the absence of these actions have their origin in penny-pinching thinking. dump the air? probably an hour to recharge. have the 'crew' called earlier? maybe $500. have a police escort for train through town. $1000. a train with $3.5 million of cargo should have had many more folk involved. i calculate that mm&a grossed $100k + per move. so, not only penny-pinching but really dumb. the ripples from this continue to travel across the crude by rail opportunity. ken patrick

Moderator Note:

For the sake of clarity and keeping the discussion on-topic, a handful of recent posts from the "What's Next For MMA" thread have been moved over to this thread.

UTU conductor I would suggest, if you have the time and you have not done so yet, to read the entire thread. It is quite illuminating. I am, like you, privy to inside info but I will wait for the report. I empathize with your situation but my humble opinion is that one man crews are inherently unsafe and it is quite possible thus whole nightmare would have been avoided had a two man crew been working the job that night, hence the allegation of penny pinching on the part of the MMA.

What if the conductor assigned to the job rapped 30 HB's on.....? The FRA has been fudging the statistics on RCO incidents due to their tilt towards the carriers. The official Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union's response was, the data used to work up the statistics was erroneous due to the fact the carriers were covering up many RCO operating violations and incidents. After correcting those errors the data showed the mean RCO fatality rate 3.5 times higher than the conventional two man crew consisting of a conductor on the ground and engineer seated on the locomotive. In a recent fatal accident of an RCO on a major carrier the NTSB stated, " The workload associated with single man/woman Remote Control operation, while performing other safety critical tasks, demand to much of a single individual including the loss of situational awareness."

Regarding single manned locomotive in passenger service......... a passenger engineer on my railroad has a conductor and rear brake assigned during the entire tour of duty. Leaving New York for example during the commission hours as many as 5 other trainmen may be acting as ticket collectors manning the assignment. Most would agree that seven trainmen is more than enough qualified manpower to handle any eventuality.