40 still missing in deadly Canada oil train crash

I’m amazed at how flimsy looking the tanker cars are.

Tank cars are "lightly" built for the same reason that oil tanks on tank farms are "lightly" built.

They are supposed to fail before there is a high pressure build-up inside them, so as to reduce the risk of a massive explosion.

"Did they say why?"

As okie01 pointed out, it was A FIRE! (have you seen the pic?)

Shutting off a vehicle with an engine fire is a straightforward thing to do (assuming it can be safely done) to shut off fuel pumps, electrical systems, and begin to cool the engine (hot exhaust and all).

If, in fact, railroad personnel were on site by the end of the firefighting "exercise", the FD is absolved of anything that happened to the train after that (assuming that they were successful in putting out the fire - which they apparently were).

“As okie01 pointed out, it was A FIRE! (have you seen the pic?)”

No, I hadn’t seen/heard anything about the engine being on fire, only the aftermath. My bad, I’ve been catching up on my sleep and not getting much in-depth news the last few days.

While I am certainly no expert, I have been in the railroad business for almost 25 years. Some of you reading these threads may have similar experience to myself, but I just want to explain something to the public here about the basic braking system on trains without being super technical.

In order for the brakes on a train to work there is a pipe that goes through the whole train called the... brake pipe, which is charged with air by an air compressor on the locomotive. Each car in the train is connected by rubber hoses (that you see under the couplers), with a valve at each end of the car called an “anglecock”.

For most freight railroads the brakepipe is charged up to 90 psig.

Now let me explain something important... the energy to press the brakeshoes against the wheel tread comes from this “brakepipe pressure”. When you hook onto a train, sometimes it takes a very long time to charge the entire train, as there are reservoirs on each car that supply the pressure to the brake cylinders.

It is a failsafe system... that is... and I don’t want to complicate this... but in order to set the brakes, the engineer makes what is called a “brakepipe reduction”... on each railroad car is a valve that senses the pressure change, and proportionally (I believe the ratio is 2.5:1) pressurizes the brake cylinder on each car from this reservoir mounted on each car.

In an emergency, or if something happens and the brakepipe is exhausted, full braking pressure is applied...called an emergency brake application.

Basically what I am getting at here is that if the air compressor is shut down and the brakepipe pressure begins to bleed off, eventually the brakes begin to set, and the more they bleed off the more brake pressure is applied.

Normal procedure when securing a train is to make a “full service” brake application... so the brakes should have already been set. Also each railroad has rules regarding how many handbrakes are set to secure standing equipment.

I really have no idea what happened here. but it seems that someone was fiddling with the locomotive and the fallout of this will be more federal regulation simply because railroad employees can’t follow the company rules already in place.

Every time there is an accident or, God forbid, a fatality, there is a wave of MORE regulations which, trust me, it is amazing that anything gets moved in this country by rail... I mean, the book that covers just the railroad regulations from the Federal Railroad Administration is about 2-1/2” thick.... they never take away the restrictions... they just add more and more and more.

We will see what has really happened here in Quebec... I really haven’t tuned in looking for answers... as it will eventually come out and make sense...

I know that the train should have been secured a certain way by railroad rules.... but now it is sounding like an examination of the cab, or the “Event Recorder” (that the media keeps calling “The Black Box”) will show the brakepipe pressure and speed and locomotive brake status (the locomotive has it’s own air brake).... and investigators will be able to look through the wreckage and find what handbrakes were applied.

I would hazard that someone from the FD was in the cab fiddling with the handles and knocked off the train brake (automatic brake they call it)... and the handbrakes set were insufficient to hold the train on the grade.

Others with practical RR knowledge feel free to chime in here if people have questions or comments... there are multiple postings on here about this accident already and I can’t keep up with them all.

Note remote control "caboose".

they can even look for bones and bone fragments and do some kind of rough arithmetic to determine how many people they've found.

Sad science for sure. Reminds me of 911.