Ghost train explodes, devastates Quebec town

[Evie]

This happened last nnight, and how and why it happened seems to be one big mystery at this point. So far, it's resulted in 2000+ evacuated, and dozens if not a hundred missing and feared dead.

What's known is that a train loaded with oil derailed and exploded in the middle of the downtown area.

You can see CBC's reporting on it here (not quoting in full, since it'S a fairly long article) :
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2013/07/06/quebec-train-derailment-fire.html

There were early reports (as seen in that article) that the train was automated, which would raise plenty of questions. But the latest information paint a different picture that raise even more questions :

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news...+derails+explodes+Megantic/8625250/story.html

MONTREAL - The train that careened into the centre of town in Lac Mégantic early Saturday morning was unmanned when it derailed and exploded in a huge ball of flame, says a spokesperson for the company that owned the locomotive.

Joseph R. McGonigle confirmed to The Gazette early Saturday afternoon that shortly before midnight, the train's conductor stopped in nearby Nantes, locked the brakes and checked to ensure that the rail cars carrying thousands of litres of crude oil were all securely attached.

He then checked into a nearby Lac Mégantic hotel for the night. Another conductor was reportedly expected to take over driving the train within a few hours.

"Sometime after (the first conductor left), the train got loose," said McGonigle, who is vice president of marketing for The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway. "It travelled under its own inertia to the centre of the town."

The locomotive portion of the 73-car train actually detached half a mile outside of the small town, he added, but the cars carrying the oil kept right on rolling. McGonigle said there are security mechanisms in place to prevent anyone from tampering with the train, and the proper checks were done by the conductor before he left the vehicle. No one except him or another employee of the company should have been able to set it in motion.

"That's what confuses us. How did this happen?" McGonigle said. "There are many fail-safe modes. How this happened is just beyond us."

 

[emzie]

Looks as bad as that fertilizer plant in West, Texas. If not as explosive, in a denser area with less warning.

 

[Evie]

Yeah, it really isn't looking good.

(Canadian One-upmanship: and ours had a ghost train too!)

 

[Cutlass]

I guess those fail safes weren't as safe as they thought

 

[Evie]

So it seems. Still going to be interesting to see what failsafes those were and what could have caused them to fail.

 

[Cutlass]

Who investigates things like that in Canada?

 

[Evie]

The Transportation safety board will definitely be involved (federal). Provincial authorities may also contribute. I'm honestly not sure.

EDIT: on futher investigation, since there were deaths the Coroner Office for Quebec will investigate as well.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Damn, that really sucks

Condolences to our northern brothers.

 

[emzie]

Huffington Post Quebec claims 80 missing

 

[Evie]

That's about the number range we've seen/heard around here - 60-100.

And the thing that worries a lot of people is that the hospitals report no injured checking in.

 

[bhsup]

This is confusing. Google maps says Lac Mégantic and Nantes are about 7.6 miles apart. So that means that not only did this train get moving on its own, the locomotive detatched itself about 7 miles after that. But also, if it detatched itself but the rest of the cars kept rolling, is that suggesting that the train was rolling backwards down the track?

 

[Zelig]

So it seems. Still going to be interesting to see what failsafes those were and what could have caused them to fail.

I assume the problem was too small a budget for engineering salaries.

 

[r16]

ahha , a field day for the tin-foil brigade . Al Crusading (Jazeera to sane people ) had it only one confirmed dead . Immediately followed by the plane crash in San Fransisco , which at least can be explained its pilots hitting this sea wall at the end of runway .

and since it must be highly expected of me to mention stuff in Turkey regardless of whether on topic or not , a certain TV channel reported two people "murdered" . Now in Turkish , you immediately differentiate between two people who were killed in an accident and two killed by other people . It's not yet clear if they mean that the US Goverment -fearful of its weapon test gone awry- had to kill two Chinese teenagers (since everybody surviving would certainly make it a weapon test) or that TV Channel is planning to mock people who watch with extreme prejudice by misleading them or Facepook will henceforth will permaban any anti-Goverment Turkish user ; although their executive appears to have changed planes at the last minute .

for the tin-foil brigade and history , ı believe a Turkmen satellite channel out of Iraq had a movie with kids getting a train runaway by mistake that night ...

 

[keli]

I remember some guys got arrested for a plot to derail trains in Canada. Could this two events have something in common ?

edit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22286334

bbc search engine: http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=canada train arrest&search_form=in-page-search-form

 

[Borachio]

This is a mystery.

I don't know how fail-safe brakes on trains work, but on semi-trailers they work by compressed air holding the brakes off when you want to move. So in in the event of failure they come on automatically. The only way to circumvent them is to wind them off manually. I'd have thought something similar is used on train wagons. So, even if it's foul play, that would be an awful lot of trouble that someone has gone to.

I think, though, that's a bit of a simplification of the Westinghouse railway system. I'm not sure. I can't really make it out.

 

[Cutlass]

This is a mystery.

I don't know how fail-safe brakes on trains work, but on semi-trailers they work by compressed air holding the brakes off when you want to move. So in in the event of failure they come on automatically. The only way to circumvent them is to wind them off manually. I'd have thought something similar is used on train wagons. So, even if it's foul play, that would be an awful lot of trouble that someone has gone to.

I think, though, that's a bit of a simplification of the Westinghouse railway system. I'm not sure. I can't really make it out.

The limitations on an air brake system on a train would be weight and the condition of the system. That is, if you have enough weight, and only a portion of the system is working well enough to function correctly, that might not be enough to overcome the weight of the whole train on a grade. Railroad tracks are limited to very shallow grades. But there is just such an immense weight involved that it doesn't take much grade to add up to a lot of momentum.

 

[Borachio]

Yes. I understand that I think. But there's also quite a lot of braking surface involved too. Each wagon (and I only know about wagons designed to carry shipping containers, so my information may not be all that accurate), only carries 3 TEU's with a maximum weight, together, of 60 tonnes or so - let's be conservative and say they're grossly overloaded and the maximum load of a wagon is 100 tonnes. The maximum train loads that go past the bottom of my garden have about 40 wagons, each wagon weighs maybe 15 tonnes (?), giving a gross weight of 4,600?

A train can have up to what number of wagons in the US? I haven't a clue. But the point I must emphasize is that each wagon has its own braking, so I don't see it makes any difference.

The maximum gradient is about 1 in 200, I guess. Yeah, there's a lot of momentum, but there's a lot of stopping power too.

The question remains: How does a fail-safe system apparently fail and an unattended stationary train suddenly start to move?

 

[Cutlass]

Well, you'd have to look up the size of that particular train. But in the US, and, I would assume, Canada, trains of over 200 wagons is not uncommon.

The article says 73 rail cars of oil. Each railcar might weigh 50 to 100 tons. So just guessing, because oil is a heavy thing to transport, 100 tons times 73 cars, it takes very little in the way of grade for that kind of weight to want to roll down hill. So we can only speculate on what failed in the braking system that would allow it to. If some number of the cars failed to engage the brakes properly, they might have had enough weight to overcome the braking of the others. And one of the problems with brakes is that they lose effectiveness as they heat up. So once you have some movement against some of the brakes, they can possibly overheat and the system fails further.

Hopefully there's enough for the accident investigators to reconstruct.

 

[bhsup]

That still doesn't explain the decoupling of the locomotive. That's what really has me flummoxed and thinking maybe it was someone just doing a high risk prank that went horribly awry and they panicked at the end of it. Or some sort of employee revenge thing...

 

[Cutlass]

I would more expect a worn out or damaged piece of equipment.