Cliff notes:
train derails and explodes.
significant portion of downtown area of a small Quebec town is destroyed.
hospitals set up to receive injured people
no one shows up at the hospital
red cross advises that there will be no injuries, the people have been vaporized.
about 40 are still unaccounted for
seriously, is this real?
Say whattt
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Did I hear someone forgot to set the parking brake?
Those are some well built stairs…
that’s why there are so many people still unaccounted for… there is nothing left to identify them.
non cliffs: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/09/us-train-narrative-insight-idUSBRE96801Q20130709
WTF
Wow… R.I.P
:[ jeez
i cant believe there is no fail-safe way to keep the brakes engaged.
or perhaps use a separate generator to keep the air brakes working, not the whole locomotive.
or turn on the fifth locomotive thats 4 cars away and use that for the brakes.
horrible lack of communication here
This read is incredible. Someone totally dropped the ball here after the initial fire, but then again who knows what caused the fuel leak to begin with.
And it’s too bad Denzel Washington wasn’t there to save the day:
“Where’s the train man?! You better go stop it!”
“Sheeeeeeaaaaaaaiiiiiitttttt!”
They really need more stringent laws in Canada. If worker’s safety and training wasn’t so lacking this tragedy could have been prevented.
In all seriousness this is sad, RIP.
If you guys realized the quality of equipment that is on the railroad you would have a better understanding of how things like this happen.
I’m interested to hear more about these comments and what source of information you have regarding the Rail industry?
From the Article, it does not sound like Worker Training was an issue, as the worker tied the engine down correctly. It was someone outside the railroad that turned the engine off without knowing the implications.
And the equipment failures, as the one that probably caused the fire, could easily happen to a new locomotive, and could have easily happened to the 5th locomotive instead of the first if it was being used.
Ultradriver was clearly joaking.
i was mostly referring to the engineer being nowhere around apparently offering his insight on the situation. like saying, if you shut that off the brakes will lose pressure… lack of communication between the fire department and train operator
Doing a little reading about air brakes for trains, I’m going to guess that this happened due to a known limitation of the braking system, as well as a lack of Hand Brake applications.
The braking system has an emergency brake, that is initiated if a loss of main line pressure happen. You may have encountered this if you are stuck at a crossing with a train that doesn’t move for a long time. One brake hose ruptures, it automatically enables the emergency brake for the train and it automatically stops. The limitation is that this works on the principle that there is a RAPID change in pressure. If the system bleeds down, as it appears to have in this case, this would not have had the rapid loss of pressure necessary to initiate the Emergency brakes. This is where the Hand Brakes come in, as reported in some articles. There should be a sufficient number of Hand Brakes enabled on the train so that it will not move should the air brakes fail. The number used in this case is currently unknown, and is likely the cause of it not staying in place.
Reading:
http://www.railway-technical.com/brake2.shtml#BrakeApplication
http://www.montrealgazette.com/8635222.bin
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/montreal/Mégantic+What+causes+runaway+train/8631894/story.html
Oasis knows his trains…lol
This is pretty neat
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=81581
Sure does, lol.
How did a few weeks ago work out for you? :lol:
