Train - hazardous cargo "accident"

[flusher]

I spent 4th of July with my son and DIL in Sacramento. There's a single track line that runs North-South through mid-town. We were stopped while a long freight (3 engines pulling, 2 pushing) when by. I didn't count the number of tank cars that passed, but it was a lot. All it takes is one of those tanks with something deadly like chlorine to rupture in an accident to get a scary body count.

 

[3930dave]

I remember it happening, but had to look up the details:

1979 Mississauga train derailment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amazingly, no fatalities. The Brakeman got the Order of Canada for his actions - he saved many lives that day.

Things go wrong, in any era. There was a reason that there were cabooses on trains.

W/O trained staff in place, you are missing the chance that human intervention can stop or minimize a disaster. But, the corporations get to drive their labour costs down.

Progress.

Rgds, D.

 

[andrec999]

It is a major tragedy, 60 people are still missing, as of this morning. How can this happen in 2013 . We have cars that park by themselves and auto pilot on airplane , but we cant have train that have proper parking brakes.

 

[3930dave]

Human error and tampering can cause quite a lot of grief.

At this stage of a tragedy, there is still a great deal of confusion; perhaps more details will come to light. If the reporting is correct, I find it really strange that a brake failure happened AND the locomotive de-coupled itself at the same time. The odds of both happening on their own must be pretty slim.

I hope they can find any injured people as soon as possible.

Rgds, D.

 

[Scooby074]

Some pictures of the incident. It looks like something out of WWII. Heartbreaking. There are many missing and the death toll is suspected to rise immensely.

WWW.SPIQ.CA - D?aillement de train à Lac-Mégantic

 

[Rock knocker]

I'm fairly certain that they are setup that way. I do know for certain that the trains I've seen have air brakes, and all the cars have brakes on them.

There's only 2 explanations I can think of, 1) the engineer didn't set the brakes. or 2) someone gained access and released them.(this is where the 'greenies' could be entered into the equation as posted above) (or it could be an act of terrorism)

I would think that the engines would have to be running to release the brakes, because they are probably air-off.

 

[bcp]

From:
Key things confirmed in the Lac-Mégantic train blast - Ottawa - CBC News

What we still don’t know

The cause

It is still not clear what caused the train cars to roll downhill and leave the tracks. The company reports that the train was stopped 6.8 kilometres uphill from the town at 11:25 p.m. by the engineer. At some point before 1:15 a.m. ET, the train moved downhill. Railway personnel pulled 13 cars intact from the rear of the train at the scene.“We will be taking a look at the black box. Hopefully we’ll recover that,” Glen Pilon, an investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said Saturday afternoon. “Until that’s happened, we’re going to approach this the way that we do every other investigation and that’s taking a look at everything and not ruling anything out until we find something to focus on.”

 

[3930dave]

I've ranted about CorporateGovernment in other threads.... this comment from the CBC article is a good summation. I have no direct experience with Transport Canada on these matters, but I'll be surprised if the commenter is wrong.

"However, agreed on Pt. 2 - railways govern themselves. As with food inspection, Transport Canada has morphed from an inspection and enforcement role to an audit role, without the legislative tools to force companies to enforce or fine companies for deficiencies in their audit results. Essentially, they've established a feedback loop where TC audits, tells the company they're not doing something, the company replies, often not fixing the safety problem, and then TC goes back and audits again... but since their is no penalty for a poor audit, there is no cost... oh yeah, and TC has to give the company 30 days notice that they're conducting an audit. "

Same guy, raised some other critical points:

"Lots of discussions in the media about reasons why the air brakes may have failed, but this does not explain why hand brakes failed as well.

Also doesn't explain why there was only one locomotive attached to a train that handles 10,000 tons and why they leave a train on a grade without setting derails so a runaway train cannot run down the hill into a populated area.

Either full procedures for securing an unattended train were not being followed, or the procedures in place were woefully inadequate."

I'd always had the impression that our government had taken a "hands-off" approach to railways, but I didn't think it was quite this bad.

Rgds, D.

 

[Soundguy]

assuming it had mechanical applied brakes that have to be power-unapplied ( like standard spring/air brakes ).. then it would hav eto boil down to human error, radical mechanical failure, or terrorism.

hope they can figure out which.

as for the loss of life. just terrible... very sad. i wonder if any hope of still finding a survivor?

on another point... with as much technology as there is in rail movement. I wonder why something remotely could not have been done. ie. if the train was marked as parked... too bad if it started moving .. that a computer somewhere couldn't have alerted n operator.. etc.. and got something going like an tertiary lockdown.. or rail change.. or even human intervention down the line.

there are plety of sensors on rialways. counting axles. looking for hot axles.. etc. and that was way back when i was looking at railwork as a possibility decades ago..

 

[Larro Darro]

I heard it was carrying oil, diesel fuel and that stuff they inject into gas wells for 'fracking'. There were several fireballs, and I didn't think oil and diesel would explode like that. Maybe if the temp is high enough they will. Rail freight is much cheaper than trucks, so they use it as much as they can. With all the new gas wells going in, getting this stuff there by pipeline is a pipe dream. And as bad as this looks, rail is safer than trucking. Just like even after the plane crash in San Fran, flying is still safer than driving yourself.