Posted on 07/10/2013 10:47:48 AM PDT by thackney
After the Nantes siding there is only single track into town until the yard switches. How does the end of the train get ahead of the front of the train? The TSB pic of the (blue) locomotive make it look upright and still on the track.
The scribes still don't have their story straight.
Probably not smokers, likely some of the few (but not enough) hand brakes set.
I’ve tried to set light crude oil on fire with a lit cigarette. (semi-controlled experiment in a safety discussion during oil field construction) I’m convinced it is essential impossible. Maybe some with a extreme amounts of specific light ends but I doubt it.
I see that. It is hard to believe that the locomotives went through before that destruction, but there was good track to haul them back through that mess towards the original parking location.
Well, there’s the pic of the loco on fire and published outtakes of interviews with the Nantes FD chief.
Caption reads:
MMA #1 is leaving Nantes, for Montreal, after switching the MMA Remote control caboose, and shuffling some units. The locos (along with the Remote Control caboose) for MMA #2 leaving in the evening, are in the siding.
MMA #1 and #2 are the "oil trains" to the Irving refinery in St. John, so we're talking about the same trains at the same location where #2 (the eastbound train) was parked.
And, apparently, an overnight at this location is SOP.
It has been really rare to see any pic of the locomotive string post accident.
I can see the engines making a curve that the tank cars didn’t.
What I don’t comprehend is enough useable track left after this destruction to move the engines back through the same spot towards the initial location before they rolled downhill to Lac-Megantic.
"Journalists" get all sorts of facts wrong.
I'm sure that parking overnight with one loco running to keep the whole train brakes on was SOP.
Too bad there was a fire in an unattended vehicle.
There is double track (siding) from the edge of Nantes towards Lac-Megantic for ~1.4 miles.
Probably. But I am sure setting enough handbrakes to hold it if that failed was also in the manual, even if not always done.
Certainly it is now...
What could possibly go wrong with leaving an unlocked, giant, 27 to 37 year old internal combustion engined vehicle idling on a steep driveway overnight?
Also, if tank cars now rent for $100/day, 72 of them is ~$300/hr. It would seem that one could hire someone to drive them on their way for less than $300/hr rather than let them sit overnight.
Connected to how many gallons of potential fuel?
20,000? x 72 gal.
Thanks for the timeline.
That the MMA employees didn’t know to have at least one engine running is startling, to say the least.
Not having set hand brakes is the biggest failure in my opinion. That was the fail safe procedure.
"On Monday morning, Lac-Mégantic fire chief Denis Lauzon appeared to contradict Burkhardt’s account that engineer Tom Harding moved some of the cars to safety, saying it was one of his volunteer firefighters who works for a company employed to tow train cars along the tracks that was asked to get as many rail cars away from the explosion as possible to prevent them catching fire.
“They were my firefighters,” Lauzon said."
I think this came out on Monday. It's definitely a problem to get the details of this event sorted out.
I saw a pic of Nantes from the next morning that showed some boxcars or lumber racks sitting on the siding.
I suppose the RR rep(s) after the fire could have cut off the locomotives and stuck them on part of the siding leaving the tank cars by themselves. That doesn't seem likely based on the limited info available about just who those particular RR folk(s) were.
Nor can I find a theory that allows the tank cars to get in front of this with both parts of the train still on the track.
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