Gerald Henriksen

Crude oil, being shipped to a refinery in New Brunswick. The tank car design is apparently known to be an issue in accidents, but industry resistance to the cost of either replacing or upgrading the existing fleet: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-09/tanker-cars-in-fatal-quebec-rail-crash-had-drawn-scrutiny.html As for the fact that cars exploded, once a fire of that size starts the heat will both weaken the steel in any cars inside the fire, as well as increase the pressure inside. Given long enough, and boom. But there was no crew on site to do anything (the train had been parked for the night and the engineer was 11 km away in Lac Magentic.

Belt pack operation. Kind of hard to couple/uncouple/switch cars with a one person crew unless the locomotives could be remotely controlled I would think.

I would guess cost. The indications are that the train was to resume its journey the following morning with a new engineer, so leaving what someone viewed as unnecessary engines running would have an impact on the fuel bill.

2 more stories that may be of interest. This story sort of covers the procedures that should have been followed to secure the train for the night - though the location of the brake wheel in the diagram is incorrect, I believe the brake wheel is actually located at the end of each car. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/M%C3%A9gantic+What+causes+runaway+train/8631894/story.html Second story is how many railways are moving to single person crew, which appears to have been the case with this train as (at least so far) only 1 crew member has been mentioned. This would also explain the need for the modified caboose often seen in the oil train consists. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Railway+companies+scaling+down+single+crew+member+some/8632006/story.html

Somewhat more detailed story of what happened to the train in this story, including the detail that the engineer used something other than a locomotive to remove the rear tank cars from the fire. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/09/lacmgantic_engineer_rushed_to_haul_tankers_away_from_crash_railway_chair_says.html

According to this report - http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/Nantes+fire+chief+confirms+late+night+fire+before/8631340/story.html - the fire in Nantes was out and the fire crew left 12:13 am, and when the fire crew left 2 MMA employees had arrived and were at the train. This would seem to remove the Nantes fire crew from the cause of the runaway.

The caboose is mentioned on the MMA website. The caboose contains equipment inside it that allows for remote operation of any locomotive that it is attached to, presumably for switching purposes where the crew is on the ground. This is I would guess more flexible for a smaller railroad that can't afford to have dedicated locomotives for this task.

The Quebec Provincial Police just held a press conference. 8 more bodies have been found, bring the total to 13. The number of missing is "around" 50.

Here is the timeline as best as I can figure. The oil cars originated in North Dakota, at point point moved into Canada and passed through Toronto on its way to Montreal. At Montreal, the cars were handed over to MMA. The MMA train left Montreal and and stopped for the night in Nantes. All reports are that at Nantes the crew shut down all but 1 of the engines, leaving one engine running to maintain the air brakes. No mention has been made of whether any handbrakes were set, though from the beginning MMA has been insisting that the crew followed all procedures. This occurred at about 11:25pm. Around 11:30pm the Nantes fire department responds to a report of an engine on fire. They do find the running engine on fire, and as per their procedures they use the external emergency shut off to turn the engine off before putting the fire out. When the fire is out, they leave and inform MMA of what has happened and what they have done. Some time after the fire department leaves a nearby resident who was outside witnessed a train with no lights go past, and some time later he heard the explosions in Lac Megantic. At some point after the start of the fire an engine is brought in from the Nantes side to pull some tank cars clear of the fire from the rear of the train. It is unkown if these are the original engines (somehow left behind, seems unlikely), or if this was another engine from another train.

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.

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.

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/

Noon press conference - 2 more found dead, bringing total to 5 - 40 people currently missing.

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.