pH Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 (edited) Derailment of a train carrying crude oil on the Montreal Maine & Atlantic in Lac Megantic in Quebec, followed by explosions and fire: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2013/07/06/quebec-train-derailment-fire.html CBC now saying the town centre is 'destroyed', and 1000 people (out of a total population of 6000) evacuated. Edited July 6, 2013 by pH Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supaned Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 Not good. Is this one of the crude oil block trains from the Bakken field? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pH Posted July 6, 2013 Author Share Posted July 6, 2013 Not good. Is this one of the crude oil block trains from the Bakken field? Yes, it looks like it was - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23212541 . Early reports say it may (emphasize 'may') have been a runaway. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Controller Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 Yes, it looks like it was - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23212541 . Early reports say it may (emphasize 'may') have been a runaway. The BBC report suggests that the train had become uncoupled from the locos, whilst stabled overnight. Currently, there would appear to be perhaps 60 people unaccounted for. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 Not good indeed...will be looking out for other reports on the circumstances as if the BBC report is correct that sounds somewhat suspicious... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted July 6, 2013 RMweb Gold Share Posted July 6, 2013 Latest updates say at least one fatality sadly. The plane crash at San Francisco is hogging the news at the moment, but I'll post if anything is reported here (California) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerald Henriksen Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 Press conference just ended. The fire continues to burn, though they are making progress. Overnight they were able to use foam to put out the fire on 5 tank cars, but 2 cars continue to burn. They hope later today, maybe tonight, they will be able to use foam on the 2 remaining fires. 2 more bodies found, bringing the death toll to 3 so far. The town Library has been destroyed in the explosion/fires. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerald Henriksen Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 Noon press conference - 2 more found dead, bringing total to 5 - 40 people currently missing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pH Posted July 7, 2013 Author Share Posted July 7, 2013 Police say it's not known if the approximately 40 people still unaccounted for were all in the town when the accident happened. Fire crews say the 2 tank cars still on fire could still explode, and because of that, they can't search areas near the fire. As an aside, and nothing to do with the accident itself, I was interested to see that the president and CEO of Rail World Inc., the parent company of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway is a familiar name - Ed Burkhardt. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold beast66606 Posted July 7, 2013 RMweb Gold Share Posted July 7, 2013 The worry (as reported here in the US) is the 40 people were in a bar which was near to the explosion site - once again (SFO crash yesterday) fingers crossed for a happy outcome. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerald Henriksen Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 Being reported by The Globe and Mail newspaper that fire crews responded to a fire on the engine at 11:30pm before the derailment at the town of Nantes (12 km from the site of the crash). The fire was extinguished by midnight at which point the fire crews left.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/train-endured-flames-prior-to-derailment-fire-chief/article13053347/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerald Henriksen Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 TSB (Transportation Safety Board) has possession of the engine's "black box" and the end of train device. No other new info at the current press conference, next one sometime after 7am EDT Monday. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talltim Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 Photos http://www.spiq.ca/v2/ailleurs/2013_07_06_Incendie_Lac-Megantic/index.html Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerald Henriksen Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 Not much happening so far today. While the fires are all out many areas are still too hot to allow the authorities in to search. Most of the news this morning is about the testing of air/water/soil for contamination, and even that doesn't have much in the way of real information. This article in the Toronto Star - http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/08/lac_mgantic_explosion_train_derailment_a_local_risk_due_to_old_technology.html - has a diagram showing where the rail cars ended up and the damage to the town. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dibber25 Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 TSB photo shows locomotives on the track, apparently out in the countryside and undamaged. Did the locomotives pass through the crash site and stop out of town, or did the cars become uncoupled from the locomotives (perhaps due to the 'fire' which allegedly took place on the locomotive while standing unattended at Nantes) and then run away backwards to Lac-Megantique? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pH Posted July 8, 2013 Author Share Posted July 8, 2013 TSB photo shows locomotives on the track, apparently out in the countryside and undamaged. Did the locomotives pass through the crash site and stop out of town, or did the cars become uncoupled from the locomotives (perhaps due to the 'fire' which allegedly took place on the locomotive while standing unattended at Nantes) and then run away backwards to Lac-Megantique? The reporting of what happened to the train before and during the incident suffers from the usual media confusion/ignorance about railways. This is my summing up of what I've heard and seen. It may or may not be correct. The train was an eastbound. It was tied down for the night in Nantes, west of Lac Megantic, and at a higher elevation. At some point, there appears to have been a fire on the locomotive (or one of the locomotives - I've seen a report that there were five locomotives). The fire department attended and put out the fire. There is confusion about what might have been done to the engine(s) at this point. Some time after that, the train approached Lac Megantic at high speed. The locomotive(s) appear to have made it through town and stopped east of town. There may have been eight cars that remained attached to the locomotives. (I'm seriously confused about that - what TV stations have been showing as 'the engines of the train with cars still attached' may actually be cars from the back of the train which did not derail and were drawn back westward after the accident.) The train derailed somewhere behind the engines, with the obvious terrible result. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 (edited) TSB photo shows locomotives on the track, apparently out in the countryside and undamaged. Did the locomotives pass through the crash site and stop out of town, or did the cars become uncoupled from the locomotives (perhaps due to the 'fire' which allegedly took place on the locomotive while standing unattended at Nantes) and then run away backwards to Lac-Megantique? If the BBC reports are accurate the loco's did not run away? I must stress I haven't managed to confirm that... (Edit - and like PH, plenty of vague/conflicting news reports!) Their reports suggest the cars 'somehow became uncoupled' after the train was safely tied down for the night - which was what prompted my comment above with the word 'suspicious'. I can think of plausible scenarios where the whole train was able to run away (one is pointed at in the MMA press release) - but I can't think of a scenario where only the cars ran away unless somebody uncoupled them. Who did what during and immediately after dealing with the loco fire might be important there. Edited July 8, 2013 by Glorious NSE 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 There may have been eight cars that remained attached to the locomotives. (I'm seriously confused about that - what TV stations have been showing as 'the engines of the train with cars still attached' may actually be cars from the back of the train which did not derail and were drawn back westward after the accident.) The rear of the original train definately did not derail, as there are video shots of a cut sitting on the track, silhouetted against the fire with the trains FRED blinking away...that cut seems to have been pulled clear at some point which would produce something that looked like that... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozexpatriate Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 (edited) CNN said this today: The company responsible for the train said an engine shutdown may have released air brakes holding the train in place. The train had stopped for a crew change Friday night in a station about seven miles from Lac-Megantic, the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway said. The train's engineer had "tied down" and checked into a motel. "We don't know if the brakes were properly applied to the train, and we haven't been able to get into the fire area in order to inspect," Edward Burkhardt, president and CEO of Rail World Inc., the railway's parent company, told CTV. Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada found the locomotive event recorder and planned to analyze it for information on throttle position and speed, among other data. No mention of an engine fire in Nantes. Edited July 8, 2013 by Ozexpatriate Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 (edited) No, but the earlier loco fire in Nantes is referenced in multiple news reports, the engine shutdown is reportedly something that took place as a result of the loco fire... Examples: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/08/fire_was_doused_on_train_and_engine_shut_down_before_it_smashes_into_quebec_town.html http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/M%C3%A9gantic+fire+timeline/8626739/story.html Edited July 8, 2013 by Glorious NSE Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozexpatriate Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 (edited) No, but the earlier loco fire in Nantes is referenced in multiple news reports, the engine shutdown is reportedly something that took place as a result of the loco fire...Which is what I was guessing. My "no mention of a fire" comment was more a reflection of CNN's reporting - not that the fire didn't take place. None of the TV news reports (including BBC World) mentioned the fire in Nantes either. It seems like a really significant piece of information. Edited July 8, 2013 by Ozexpatriate Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Controller Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 Is it possible that, when the fire occurred, the locomotives were uncoupled from the train to reduce the risk of the fire spreading, and the air-brakes on the wagons 'leaked off', causing the wagons to roll free after some time had elapsed? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
andyman7 Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 The rear of the original train definately did not derail, as there are video shots of a cut sitting on the track, silhouetted against the fire with the trains FRED blinking away...that cut seems to have been pulled clear at some point which would produce something that looked like that... http://www.mmarail.com/sections/news/files/MMA_7.7.2013_Press%20Release_1415.EST.pdf This is from the company's own website and indicates that after the derailment, a number of cars (presumably intact and on the rails) were detached and drawn away. It isn't clear whether the locos used for this were the ones originally hauling the train. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glorious NSE Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 My "no mention of a fire" comment was more a reflection of CNN's reporting Gotcha. It does seem to be info that's gradually coming out. Recent BBC (for example) web reports do mention it. Interestingly they also continue to suggest it was uncoupled cars running away: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23231470 Is it possible that, when the fire occurred, the locomotives were uncoupled from the train to reduce the risk of the fire spreading, and the air-brakes on the wagons 'leaked off', causing the wagons to roll free after some time had elapsed? Certainly possible, it would be a plausible reason for the runaway, and the actions are a plausible thing to have been done during the loco fire - but if so why such seeming confusion over what happenned? The official statement from MMA suggests the loco shutdown then led to the brakes leaking off - but if it was uncoupled then the loco shutdown is kinda ancillary to the whole issue... Maybe the MMA release points to it being the entire train that ran away as PH suggests... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozexpatriate Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 (edited) Without knowing whether there was a locomotive attached to the train in Lac Mégantic, it seems very plausible to me that this was a runaway with no locomotive, though based on the map at the bottom of the BBC story and the direction of the train it would seem that head of the train entered Lac Mégantic first. A big question to cause might be "exactly what caught fire in Nantes?" Could something hot and/or smoldering have rolled down the hill? (Not that it's necessary. 73 full tankers colliding with each other are perfectly capable of self-immolation.) Edited July 8, 2013 by Ozexpatriate Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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