Canada train blast Lac-Megantic

[whole diary]

[stuving]

I seem to recall that the old vacuum brakes were applied by a big spring and the vacuum was required to release them. I assumed this was the case with air brakes too. It appears not.  Someone will be able to tell us how it works in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

Just to clear up the point raised - both vacuum and air train brakes are applied by the (+/-) air pressure. They do have springs but to push the pad/shoe off. Air was better from pretty early on, but there's a big reverse compatibility issue that meant vacuum survived in Britain for a long time.

As to why spring-applied parking brakes are not used I don't know. I can't see any compatibility issue, other than in training and procedures. A steel spring will be heavier that a compressed air one applying the same force, but on reflection that's hardly an adequate reason. HGVs have air brakes that are not unlike train ones, but they all have spring-applied parking brakes. Since they need more powerful brakes (for steeper gradients) and are less able to carry excess weight, it's not easy to see why trains can't use them.

Lots of details on Wikipedia for this topic, including the history. In fact there are at least three very similar topics, for some reason. Fortunately they all say much the same thing.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Another incident in Canada - thankfully with no fatalities or injuries - from Reuters:

Rail cars on fire after crude train derails in Ontario, Canadian National Railway says

(Reuters) - Seven rail cars were on fire in northern Ontario after a train carrying crude oil derailed late on Saturday night, Canadian National Railway said on Sunday.

The train, heading from Alberta to eastern Canada, derailed shortly before midnight about 80 km (50 miles) south of Timmins, Ontario, a CN spokesman said. Canada's largest rail operator said 29 of 100 cars were involved and seven were on fire.

"The derailment occurred in a remote wooded area and there are no reports of injuries. There is a fire at the scene," Patrick Waldron said in an email.

Investigators from the Transportation Safety Board have been sent to the site, the agency said on Sunday.

CN, which has dispatched firefighting and environmental crews and equipment to the scene, said the train had been visually inspected four times, most recently on Saturday, and had passed over a wayside safety detector about 20 miles before the derailment with no issues identified.

A boom in oil shipments by rail and a spate of derailments across North America have put heightened focus on rail safety. In 2013, 47 people were killed in the Quebec town of Lac-M^gantic after a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded.

[stuving]

And now another, this time in West Virginia, USA - from ABC news:

West Virginia Train Derailment: Fireball Erupts Into Sky As Derailment Sends Tanker Into River
Feb 16, 2015, 6:47 PM ET
Anastasia Williams and Elara Mosquera

A fire burns, Feb. 16, 2015, after a train derailment near Charleston, W.Va

A train carrying more than 100 tankers of crude oil derailed in West Virginia on Monday - sending a massive fireball hundreds of feet into the sky, igniting a home and causing hundreds in the area to evacuate.

The CSX train had 109 cars - 25 of which derailed around 1:17 p.m., and about half of those cars caught fire or are leaking oil. Several of the cars spilled into the Kanawha River, officials said.

[SandTEngineer]

After a very long time an update: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42752119

A Canadian jury has found three former rail workers not guilty of criminal negligence for their connection to the Lac-Megantic disaster five years ago.

On 6 July 2013, a runaway train filled with petroleum crude oil derailed in the small eastern Quebec town.

Forty-seven people were killed in the tragedy and much of Lac-Megantic's downtown core was destroyed.

The trial began 2 October in a Quebec Superior Court in Sherbrooke, about 100km (62 miles) west of Lac-Megantic.

Locomotive engineer Tom Harding, traffic controller Richard Labrie and manager of train operations Jean Demaitre were charged in 2014 with criminal negligence causing the death of 47 people.

Under Canada's criminal code, the charge carries a potential life sentence.

All three pleaded not guilty.

The twelve men and women on the jury began deliberating on 11 January.

On Tuesday, Quebec Superior Court Justice Gaetan Dumas sent them back into deliberations after they told him they were at an impasse.

Up in flames
The tragedy began when a fire broke out in the main locomotive after Mr Harding had parked the train in the village of Nantes and left for the night to sleep.

Firefighters extinguished the flames and turned off the engine, which cut the air breaks. An hour later, the train rolled into downtown Lac-Megantic and derailed, exploding in a huge blaze.

Mr Harding admitted that he only applied seven handbrakes and did not fully test them before leaving the train.

The prosecution argued more handbreaks would have stopped the train from moving.

After he learned of the explosion, Mr Harding helped emergency responders detach the remaining fuel cars from the train.

Long deliberations
When the verdict was finally read, CBC reported that the those in the courtroom let out a loud gasp.

The jurors listened to hours of technical testimony from train specialists, heard audio recordings from the incident and listened to former rail employees testify that the company had no budget for training and placed little importance on safety, according to CBC.

The jury deliberated for eight days, at one point asking the judge for clarification on the concept of "marked difference", which the behaviour of the accused would have to be noticeably different from a colleague in a similar circumstance.

Mr Harding and the other accused waived their right to mount a defence. Instead, their lawyers argued that the prosecutors' case did not meet the burden of proof.

Lawyers for the accused argued that many factors out of their control contributed to the disaster, including a culture at Montreal, Maine and Atlantic railway (MMA) of relaxed standards and insufficient training.

MMA also failed to heed a Transportation Safety Board's report that said the rail line running from Nantes to Lac-Megantic was the second steepest of any stretch of track in Canada.

The Canadian Transportation Agency suspended MMA's license after the accident.

[Bmblbzzz]

On a tangent, one of Jack Kerouac's various jobs was as a brakeman responsible for applying the handbrakes on freight wagons on a Californian railway. He did this even after he got On the Road published (I don't think his writing made him much money and in any case he seems to have enjoyed being a railroad man.)