Derailment and fire in Quebec

[dave1905]

Part of what is frustrating is that there is so much misinformation out there even after the report was released (and its not unique to one forum).

 

The engineer didn't test the hand brakes (incorrect, he did test them).

The engineer was relying on the train air brakes to hold the train (incorrect, the train air brakes were released, so the train air brakes were not in the picture at all.)

There should be derails on the sidings (there is a derail on the siding at Nantes, it was applied and was protecting the cars that there stored in the siding.)

The RTC should have verified that the train was secured (the RTC was told by the engineer that the train was properly secured).

 

Its also frustrating that I get the impression that people think that all NA railroads operate the way the MMA did.  I am going through rules training for a class 1 railroad right now and the management rules test is about equal mixes of hazmat rules, operating rules, air brake rules and testing program rules. over a 2 or 3 day period.  The entire operating management rules training  is structured from the standpoint of train crew training and testing.  If anything, we have too many rules.  If you printed all the operating rules, safety rules, airbrake rules,  special instructions, general orders, superintendent's bulletins, timetables, hazmat rules, etc. on regular sheets of paper it would be a stack over an inch thick (not counting the conductors train list, the engineer's train list, the hazmat response sheets, track warrants and bulletins for an individual trains that could add another 1/4 to half inch to the pile.) NA railroads do benchmark other railroads and, surprise, EU and GB railroads benchmark NA roads too.

 

As big as it is, crude oil is still a small slice of the hazmat pie in NA.  Crude oil is not the most dangerous commodity or the one with the highest risk.  Its just the most publicized one.  Most of the "new" regulations on handling crude oil were not major changes for railroads because they were already doing those things as part of the "normal" transportation of hazmat.  Make crude oil trains special "key" trains?  They were before Lac Megantic.  Reduce the speed of the trains?  They were before Lac Megantic.

[bok]

Good comments all.

 

Safety is the most important thing on all railroads large or small but some roads comply more readily than others. It really comes down to the employee in the field deciding to comply with the rules and operate within the boundaries set by management or deciding not to.

 

The oil business including the associated frac sand business will be with us for atleast the next 50 years regardless of any new pipeline construction. The oil companies have come to appreciate the flexibility of oil by rail because many refineries are not located on pipelines and they require a lengthy contract with the pipeline companies.

 

Many parties are fault for this incident outside of the MM&A and while truly tragic we will learn from it and go on. My point was to be careful what is said regarding these incidents even if discusssing the facts, as it appreared some posters were singling out short lines for their negative comments. Until you have toiled day and night to start up one of these operations( which I have many times) you really don't know what you are talking about. It is a thankless task attempting to bring good, safe,rail transportation back for customers after a large carrier has allowed it to deterioriate due to poor maintainence of track and service.Every penny is spent with safety in mind while trying to bring revenues back.

 

Ed Burkhardt and his company are good safe railroaders who did the best they could with the MM&A. In the past they started up and successfully operated the the Wisconsin Central and other properties. Unfortunately, the first day of operations on the MM&A they lost 60% of their business when two large paper mills shut down. They have tried for the last ten years to restore the line to profitability and probably would have succeeded had this incident not happened.

 

Barry   

[Talltim]

Dave, I for one don't think that all NA roads are the same, and also don't think that small roads are intrinsically less safe than large ones. However the corporate culture at MMA specifically does not come across well in the report.
Mind you in the UK there can be companies with a similar if not worse attitude, mentioning no names.
Cough, Stafford, cough

Edited August 21, 2014 by Talltim

[The Stationmaster]

Part of what is frustrating is that there is so much misinformation out there even after the report was released (and its not unique to one forum).

 

The engineer didn't test the hand brakes (incorrect, he did test them).

The engineer was relying on the train air brakes to hold the train (incorrect, the train air brakes were released, so the train air brakes were not in the picture at all.)

There should be derails on the sidings (there is a derail on the siding at Nantes, it was applied and was protecting the cars that there stored in the siding.)

The RTC should have verified that the train was secured (the RTC was told by the engineer that the train was properly secured).

 

Its also frustrating that I get the impression that people think that all NA railroads operate the way the MMA did.  I am going through rules training for a class 1 railroad right now and the management rules test is about equal mixes of hazmat rules, operating rules, air brake rules and testing program rules. over a 2 or 3 day period.  The entire operating management rules training  is structured from the standpoint of train crew training and testing.  If anything, we have too many rules.  If you printed all the operating rules, safety rules, airbrake rules,  special instructions, general orders, superintendent's bulletins, timetables, hazmat rules, etc. on regular sheets of paper it would be a stack over an inch thick (not counting the conductors train list, the engineer's train list, the hazmat response sheets, track warrants and bulletins for an individual trains that could add another 1/4 to half inch to the pile.) NA railroads do benchmark other railroads and, surprise, EU and GB railroads benchmark NA roads too.

 

As big as it is, crude oil is still a small slice of the hazmat pie in NA.  Crude oil is not the most dangerous commodity or the one with the highest risk.  Its just the most publicized one.  Most of the "new" regulations on handling crude oil were not major changes for railroads because they were already doing those things as part of the "normal" transportation of hazmat.  Make crude oil trains special "key" trains?  They were before Lac Megantic.  Reduce the speed of the trains?  They were before Lac Megantic.

Having read the report summary (the effectiveness of the hand brakes was NOT tested)I seriously wonder where you are coming from with your claim that they were tested.  Either the report is wrong or you are because you can't both be right - or does logic work in a different way on US railroads?  And incidentally I don't think anyone has suggested the train was held on the auto air brakes - the report states hand brakes plus the loco brake(s).

 

Interesting to know incidentally that the Rules etc would be about an inch thick - that's probably about the same as the total UK equivalent in BR days, possibly not quite as much in fact.  Now if we were capable of learning all that applied to our work and remembering it and applying it I'm quite sure plenty of others are the same plus of course you really make sure that you know the bits which apply to a particular job you are doing or trains which you are working.

 

Incidentally I don't really think anybody is tarring every US railroad with the MMA brush - I know from colleagues who have studied US methods that on some roads their training for footplatemen (Engineers) is as good as any where men & women are, in effect, being taken straight out of the labour market for such work but it is interesting that in at least one case more of the training emphasis is on saving fuel when train handling than on other aspects of handling (although some of them clearly benefit from fuel economy based handling).

[Gerald Henriksen]

Having read the report summary (the effectiveness of the hand brakes was NOT tested)I seriously wonder where you are coming from with your claim that they were tested.  Either the report is wrong or you are because you can't both be right - or does logic work in a different way on US railroads?  And incidentally I don't think anyone has suggested the train was held on the auto air brakes - the report states hand brakes plus the loco brake(s).

 

 

I think there is confusion on terminology leading to some incorrect understandings.

 

Section 2.1 of the report clearly states that the LE released the automatic air brakes to test the effectiveness of hand brakes.

 

The "error" made was that the LE did not release the independent brakes during the test.

 

Definition of what automatic air brakes and independent brakes are is sections 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 of the report, but short version is that the independent brake is air brakes for the locomotives only, automatic air brakes is the entire train.

 

The hand brakes on the locomotives only provided braking on a limited number of wheels and were less effective than on the tank cars (section 2.3.3), so by leaving the independent brakes on a false test result was obtained when doing the hand brake test.

[jjb1970]

I think we all recognise that we should not judge North American rail roads based on this incident, there is no doubt that there is plenty of extremely professional, well managed and safe railroading in NA just as all countries have their chancers. Many of us are great enthusiasts of NA trains, speaking for myself I love North Eastern roads (particularly Pennsylvania and Conrail) as well as Canadian trains and if judged purely by how much I spend then my model railway fleet is mainly North American (though not in numbers of models by a long way).

In terms of rules, procedures and everything else that forms a safe system of work then there is a balance between a robust system and keeping the system usable. This is a potential conflict in most safety critical industries and sometimes the systems can become unwieldy and too complicated for those who have to use them. This is not really related to size as I've seen such systems that's produce a stack of paper much more than an inch thick and which were very well constructed, logical and usable but rather the technical content. I've also seen procedures three or four pages long that were almost incomprehensible to all but the person that wrote them. If the system is well constructed (in modern management speak, the architecture....) then people are more than capable of learning and using very heavy safe systems of work. I know I keep banging on about electricity but there we had 12 basic rules, Rules A1 - A8 plus 4 general provisions. Those 12 basic rules covered everything and took up 4 pages in the rule book. There was then a mountain of additional rules to implement these 12 basic rules, procedures, management instructions, local management instructions etc etc which if collected into a single volume would have needed a heavy lifting risk assessment but because everything flowed from those 12 basic rules and were built up in a logical fashion it was actually a very user friendly system which almost anybody could learn pretty quickly. 

[Gerald Henriksen]

Section 2.5 has further info regarding the power of independent brakes.

 

The train needed 146,700 lbs of braking force to keep it stationary given the grade and weight of the train.

 

The independent brakes provided 215,500 lbs of brake force, so as long as the independent brakes were set that train was going nowhere.

[The Stationmaster]

I think there is confusion on terminology leading to some incorrect understandings.

 

Section 2.1 of the report clearly states that the LE released the automatic air brakes to test the effectiveness of hand brakes.

 

The "error" made was that the LE did not release the independent brakes during the test.

 

Definition of what automatic air brakes and independent brakes are is sections 1.9.1 and 1.9.2 of the report, but short version is that the independent brake is air brakes for the locomotives only, automatic air brakes is the entire train.

 

The hand brakes on the locomotives only provided braking on a limited number of wheels and were less effective than on the tank cars (section 2.3.3), so by leaving the independent brakes on a false test result was obtained when doing the hand brake test.

Agree - but what it does mean is that the effectiveness of the handbrakes was not tested.  That is exactly what the summary report says as it states quite clearly that the locomotive air brake was left 'on' and was not released in order to test that the train was held by the handbrakes.  Confusion of terminology is of course understandable but the summary report is absolutely clear on that point.

[trisonic]

I’m seeing much more Crude Oil rail shipments because I’m relatively close to the main routes to the Linden Refinery (on Arthur Kill off Kill Van Kull). Usually when driving over the Goethals Bridge I would see two ships unloading - Now I rarely see any but instead lines of Crude Oil tankers lined up on the tracks to and from the terminal.

It’s interesting for people like us because the increase in “foreign” lines has been phenomenal, mostly CP, CN, UP, KCS and BNSF as well as “normal" CSX and NS locos parked up at the small servicing centre usually used for container carrying traffic opposite the main runway at Newark and next to I95.

 

Best, Pete.

[Adrian Wintle]

I’m seeing much more Crude Oil rail shipments because I’m relatively close to the main routes to the Linden Refinery (on Arthur Kill off Kill Van Kull). Usually when driving over the Goethals Bridge I would see two ships unloading - Now I rarely see any but instead lines of Crude Oil tankers lined up on the tracks to and from the terminal.

It’s interesting for people like us because the increase in “foreign” lines has been phenomenal, mostly CP, CN, UP, KCS and BNSF as well as “normal" CSX and NS locos parked up at the small servicing centre usually used for container carrying traffic opposite the main runway at Newark and next to I95.

 

Best, Pete.

 

I also see a lot of oil trains because my prime spotting locations are on the CN and CP main lines, but I've also seen the increase when visiting Delaware - the route to my friend's boat goes past the new storage sidings that were built to accomodate the traffic into Delaware City. The foreign locos is also a bonus - CN oil trains frequently have a couple of BNSF locos in the consist. CP is more likely to have an all-CP consist, although I have seen a CP-CN lashup on a westbound (empty). CN also seems to have been scraping the barrel for motive power on occasion, so there can be some good variety, like a very ratty SD60F as the lead loco (in the barber pole stripes).

 

Edit: The SD60F wasn't as ratty as I remembered, and definitely better than some I've seen. See the middle of post #8 here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/86481-southern-ontario-pictures/

 

Adrian

Edited August 21, 2014 by Adrian Wintle

[Titan]

 

As for British safety culture, the UK has some catching up to do:  5 major train crashes with significant loss of life in less then a decade are just a few examples of British failings in safety culture. 

Just which decade are we talking about?  And what do you classify as a major crash or significant  loss of life? In the last ten years there has been only one accident where more than one passenger died, and that was due to a car driver deciding to park his car on a level crossing as a means to commit suicide and took 6 others with him. The MMA accident killed more in one hit than all our accidents combined in the last ten years,

 

Just look at the outstandingly low figures over the last ten years here:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_in_the_United_Kingdom

 

And note that many of them are due to road vehicle incursions, not railway failings.

 

Not only that, the Herald of Free Enterprise was a long time ago and things have changed, and is about as relevant as citing the Titanic as an example of current safety culture!!

 

So remind me, who needs to catch up with who again?

Edited August 21, 2014 by Titan

[jjb1970]

Exactly, it's your opinion. IMO it's quite presumptious to make the claim that you did, as it implies you have full and intimate knowledge of every safety regulation anywhere in the world. But you've also implied you don't

 

As for British safety culture, the UK has some catching up to do: loss of Herald of Free Enterprise and no less then 5 major train crashes with significant loss of life in less then a decade are just a few examples of British failings in safety culture. Your experience with foreign safety culture are about cultural differences, not lack of safety conciousness...

 

Well, I do attend the International Maritime Organisation on behalf of a national delegation (the UN agency for maritime affairs), I do work for the European Commission and travel internationally on a regular basis working with clients from various countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America so whilst I wouldn't presume to know every safety regulation in the world I do probably have a lot more exposure to international safety regulations and attitudes than most. The Herald of Free Enterprise is an interesting example, after it there was a move to improve ferry survivability standards and it took the loss of the Estonia to really concentrate minds in Europe into some of Europe (not all) signing the Stockholm Agreement. And it wasn't the UK that stalled things. Most overseas countries openly admit that formal safety assessment mechanisms have been largely imported from the British model.

[The Stationmaster]

Exactly, it's your opinion. IMO it's quite presumptious to make the claim that you did, as it implies you have full and intimate knowledge of every safety regulation anywhere in the world. But you've also implied you don't

 

As for British safety culture, the UK has some catching up to do: loss of Herald of Free Enterprise and no less then 5 major train crashes with significant loss of life in less then a decade are just a few examples of British failings in safety culture. Your experience with foreign safety culture are about cultural differences, not lack of safety conciousness...

I'm trying desperately to work out which decade you're referring to.  The only major incidents I can trace on Britain's railways involving fatalities which were not down to motorists in some way or another are as follows -

 

2010 Moreton-On-Lugg  1 dead (in road vehicle but railway staff at fault.

2007 Grayrigg      1 dead badly maintained points

2002 Potters Bar 7 dead allegedly lack of maintenance on points

2000 Hatfield      4 dead rail disintegrated beneath train due to gauge corner cracking

1999 Ladbroke Grove 31 dead  SPAD

1997 Southall      6 dead SPAD

1996 Watford      1 dead SPAD

1996 Stafford      1 dead  derailment following axlebox failure led to a collision (member of PO staff so not technically a passenger)

1995 Ais Gill        1 dead (member of staff), train hit landslide

1994 Cowden      5 dead collision on single line following a SPAD

1994 Greenock    2 dead  vandalism (the dead included the train Driver)

1992 Morpeth      1 dead (possibly staff?) - collision following misunderstood message

1991 Newton       4 dead SPAD

1991 Cannon St   2 dead, train overran stop block (Driver under the influence of drugs if I remember rightly)

1990 Stafford       1 dead SPAD with extraneous cause, possibly alcohol related (the fatality was the Driver of the train which failed to stop)

1989 Bellgrove     2 dead SPAD (one fatality was a train Driver)

1988 Clapham     35 dead signal wiring fault (the dead included at least one railwayman.

 

So that goes back over more than two decades and while all lives are equally valuable and significant I'm finding it difficult to count 'no less then 5 major train crashes with significant loss of life in less then a decade'

Edited August 21, 2014 by The Stationmaster

[Gary H]

Dutch_Master, on 21 Aug 2014 - 18:11, said:Dutch_Master, on 21 Aug 2014 - 18:11, said:

Exactly, it's your opinion. IMO it's quite presumptious to make the claim that you did, as it implies you have full and intimate knowledge of every safety regulation anywhere in the world. But you've also implied you don't

 

As for British safety culture, the UK has some catching up to do: loss of Herald of Free Enterprise and no less then 5 major train crashes with significant loss of life in less then a decade are just a few examples of British failings in safety culture. Your experience with foreign safety culture are about cultural differences, not lack of safety conciousness...

Titan, JJB1970 and Mike have pretty much summed up what I was thinking but,

we in the UK now have the safest rail network in Europe.- official statistics indicate that between 2007 and 2011 there were just 2.6 passenger and workforce fatalities per billion train kilometres- the lowest in the EU, and well ahead of Germany (12.3), France (17.3) and Italy (31.3) We also have the highest passenger satisfaction figures of any major European railway apparently.

The above figures were taken from a recent news article.

Edited August 21, 2014 by Gary H

[jjb1970]

We also have the highest passenger satisfaction figures of any major European railway apparently.

The above figures were taken from a recent news article.

 

That figure surprised many and was received with some amusement by many but I actually think recognising that our own trains are pretty good is something that we are very bad at. I have to say, having used a lot of trains in a lot of countries I find our services very competitive. We lag behind in high speed rail for sure but overall in terms of getting from A to B I really think UK trains do as good a job as any and better than many. The only railway I use which really does make me cringe when I come home and do a comparison is Japan, Japanese railways really are something else.

[Gary H]

Simon Dunkley, on 21 Aug 2014 - 20:37, said:

Can we stop the international peeing contest? There are differences between countries and systems, but we are talking about professional people working under exacting demands. It's great that railway fatalities are dropping, but we are talking about people's lives here.

Willy waving is the term your looking for I think!

With respect though, it is precisely because we have professional people working under exacting demands that our own railway is as good as it is Simon.

[jjb1970]

Can we stop the international peeing contest? There are differences between countries and systems, but we are talking about professional people working under exacting demands. It's great that railway fatalities are dropping, but we are talking about people's lives here.

 

In a sense I agree, but it is exactly because we are talking about peoples lives that it is good that this subject is of interest and generates discussion. Safe systems of work are only as good as the corporate cultures and people implementing them and it is this culture that we should never become complacent about.

[jjb1970]

If I have slipped into bragging I apologise, my intent was not so much to brag as to praise the fact that bodies like the HSE and the various industry specific inspectorates, authorities and investigation branches have been doing a very good job and we should tell them that. I'd be just as quick to castigate them when they get it wrong, and they do get it wrong at times.

[trisonic]

I also see a lot of oil trains because my prime spotting locations are on the CN and CP main lines, but I've also seen the increase when visiting Delaware - the route to my friend's boat goes past the new storage sidings that were built to accomodate the traffic into Delaware City. The foreign locos is also a bonus - CN oil trains frequently have a couple of BNSF locos in the consist. CP is more likely to have an all-CP consist, although I have seen a CP-CN lashup on a westbound (empty). CN also seems to have been scraping the barrel for motive power on occasion, so there can be some good variety, like a very ratty SD60F as the lead loco (in the barber pole stripes).

 

Edit: The SD60F wasn't as ratty as I remembered, and definitely better than some I've seen. See the middle of post #8 here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/86481-southern-ontario-pictures/

 

Adrian

The people taking photos for RailPace are being driven crazy by the volume both to the Delaware refinery and the Linden one. I’d never seen a KCS loco even out west before.

 

 

 

I am all for sharing good practices, just so long as it doesn't dip into bragging rights.

Yes please let’s not go down that road otherwise I might bring up annual freight tonnage data and we really do not want to get into that!

 

OK? Thanks, everyone.

 

Pete.

[Titan]

To be fair, it was not so much intended as bragging, but as a response to correct this false impression of British safety failings, which now seems to have been comprehensively achieved!.

 

As for British safety culture, the UK has some catching up to do: loss of Herald of Free Enterprise and no less then 5 major train crashes with significant loss of life in less then a decade are just a few examples of British failings in safety culture. 

[Ozexpatriate]

Can someone offer an informed assessment on these statements from the report:
 

At around 2250, the train arrived at Nantes, was brought to a stop using the automatic brakes, and was parked for the night on a descending grade on the main track. The LE applied the independent brakes to the locomotive consist. He then began to apply the hand brakes on the locomotive consist and the buffer car (7 cars in total), and shut down the 4 trailing locomotives. Subsequently, the LE released the automatic brakes and conducted a hand brake effectiveness test without releasing the locomotive independent brakes.

In order to verify that the hand brakes applied are sufficient to secure the train, crews were required to perform a hand brake effectiveness test, in accordance with CROR 112 ( b ), to ensure that the equipment will not move. After applying the hand brakes, the test is performed by releasing all of the air brakes and allowing the slack to adjust under gravity, or by attempting to move the equipment slightly with reasonable locomotive force.

Can I conclude that this condition was not met?  I presume that with the center of gravity of the train being above the train engine, there would be no slack. Does the report indicate whether the LE tried to move the train?  I couldn't find it.  
 
I did see this:

TSB conducted a survey of LEs and conductors to determine train securement practices at Nantes, and it showed that the number of hand brakes applied to trains varied. Two-person crews would consistently apply at least the minimum number of hand brakes specified in MMA’s GSIs. Some single-person train operators reported applying less than the minimum number of hand brakes.

To perform a hand brake effectiveness test, some LEs would release the automatic and independent brakes and attempt to move the train, while others would not release the independent brakes and would not attempt to move the train. When a proper hand brake effectiveness test was performed, additional hand brakes would be applied, if required.

I'm not allocating blame here. Any of us can forget something important close to midnight after a ten hour work shift plus releasing all the brakes and attempting to move the train does not seem to be universal practice on the MMA. That's why fail safe devices (on top of procedures) are so important as a last resort. (Following the procedures properly should always work anyway but we are humans.)

 

To me the notion that the siding with it's derail could not be used because of parked cars is the bigger concern here rather than the combination of operator error, poor judgement (in hindsight) by supervisors (RTC) and an improperly maintained locomotive, since the siding with the derail was perhaps the most reliable fail safe device (while still imperfect) in this situation.

 

This tragedy could have been averted in so many ways, not least of all the suggestion of the taxi driver that something was seriously amiss. It's just very sad.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Ozexpatriate

[The Stationmaster]

Fairly simple I think Michael - it says it all in your first two quotes.  Unless ALL the power brakes, including the loco independent brake (often referred to in the UK as the straight airbrake), are released the effectiveness of the handbrakes in holding the train will not have been tested.

 

What is in effect being tested is the brake power of those handbrakes plus the independent brake whereas, as I understand it from the report, sufficient handbrakes should be applied to hold the train - to me that is very clear and simple to understand.  If a practice has developed of using the loco airbrake as part of securing the train it strikes me as bad practice and it should have been, and would have been, picked up as bad practice by effective management and supervision.

 

Incidentally I don't like the idea of specifying the number of cars on which handbrakes should be applied as that too can lead to complacency - I would have thought a simpler method would be to sate 'handbrake to be fully applied on at least X% of the train/Y% if it is a loaded train'.  But that view is more down to experience in writing Instructions and procedures which are easily understood and practically enforceable.

[Glorious NSE]

What is in effect being tested is the brake power of those handbrakes plus the independent brake whereas, as I understand it from the report, sufficient handbrakes should be applied to hold the train - to me that is very clear and simple to understand.  If a practice has developed of using the loco airbrake as part of securing the train it strikes me as bad practice and it should have been, and would have been, picked up as bad practice by effective management and supervision.

 

One thought (and yes, I know, this *is* supposition) - was there an (incorrect) assumption that the loco independant brakes gave the same braking force as applying the handbrakes on the loco's? That would lead you towards expecting there to be no difference between doing a pull test with the independant released versus doing it with the independant applied.

[dave1905]

For some reason I can't insert quotes, so I apologize for not quoting relevant text.

 

The report did mention the practice of "ten plus two", applying brakes on 10% of the cars plus add two more cars.

 

In many roads in the US there is a primary and secondary securement process.  The primary process is to apply "sufficient" handbrakes and then release all air brakes to see if the cut/train rolls away.  The secondary process is to set a minimum number of handbrakes based on the tonnage of the train and the grade.  The primary process is the default process and the secondary process is used when the primary process cannot be used (and there are those situations, rear end set out, train in emergency, etc).

 

There have been suggestions that one should never tie a train down on the main track.  Also doesn't work.  The easiest example of that is when a train has to make a set out or pick up, or works an industry.  The train stops on the main track, the power cuts off and goes into another track.  The train is left on the main track and has to be secured.  Same securement rules whether the train is there 2 hours or two days.

 

The one thing in the report that I did not see is if they tested the MMA train by setting the exact same arrangement of handbrakes and then releasing all the air brakes on the power and train  to see if it rolled away (they may have done it and I missed it).  There is a lot of assumption that the configuration would have rolled away immediately.  There is the possibility that the train could have been secured in the manner done with the independents released and the train might have stayed put for a while.  I know personally of cases where cars/engines were secured and stayed put for hours, then eventually broke free and rolled.

[Glorious NSE]

The one thing in the report that I did not see is if they tested the MMA train by setting the exact same arrangement of handbrakes and then releasing all the air brakes on the power and train  to see if it rolled away (they may have done it and I missed it).  There is a lot of assumption that the configuration would have rolled away immediately.  There is the possibility that the train could have been secured in the manner done with the independents released and the train might have stayed put for a while.  I know personally of cases where cars/engines were secured and stayed put for hours, then eventually broke free and rolled.

 

The independants weren't released, as per the loco data recorder (info from the report).