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Nearly five years after one of the worst rail disasters in Canadian history, a small town at the centre of the tragedy is still grappling with the aftermath. When Tom Harding walked out of the courtroom after being acquitted of criminal negligence causing death, he didn't speak. The former train driver instead ducked away from the news cameras, overcome with emotion. His one-time colleague, Richard Labrie, did have something to say. "Could you back up a little bit so I can look at my paper? Because my eyes are full of tears," the ex-rail worker urged media crowding around him....

A proposed settlement fund for victims of a fiery train derailment that claimed 47 lives in Canada is nearly halfway to a goal of $500 million in funding commitments ahead of its filing next month, the defunct railroad's bankruptcy trustee said. More than a dozen corporations that face potential liability in the Lac Megantic, Quebec, oil train disaster have agreed to pay over $200 million to the fund and that sum could more than double by the time judges in the U.S. and Canada sign off, bankruptcy trustee Robert Keach told The Associated Press. Keach, the trustee in the Montreal,...

The weak safety culture of a now-defunct railway company and poor government oversight were among the many factors that led to an oil train explosion that killed 47 people in Quebec last year, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board said in a new report released Tuesday. TSB chair Wendy Tadros said 18 factors played a role, including a rail company that cut corners and a Canadian regulator that didn’t do proper safety audits. The safety board issued its report 13 months after a runaway train carrying 72 carloads of volatile oil from North Dakota derailed, hurtled down an incline and slammed into...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A CSX Corp train carrying crude oil derailed and burst into flames in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia on Wednesday, spilling oil into the James River and forcing hundreds to evacuate. CSX said 15 cars on a train traveling from Chicago to Virginia derailed at 2:30 p.m. EDT. Fire erupted on three cars, the company said. Photos and video from the scene showed high flames and a plume of black smoke. It was the second oil-train accident this year for CSX. About two hours after the derailment, CSX said the fire had been extinguished. City officials said there...

The explosion destroyed six city blocks. Several of the 30 burning buildings were incinerated. Many ruptured tanker cars were bunched together like folds in an accordion. Still others, intact, could detonate at any second, and Pellerin could tell that much of the 1.5 million gallons of spilled oil had ignited and poured through the small Quebec town like lava. Canadian firefighters told Pellerin that “they actually saw people step out of their homes and be vaporized by the [burning] oil,” Pellerin told the U.S. Senate Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee in Washington on Wednesday

A 120-car Norfolk Southern Corp train carrying heavy Canadian crude oil derailed and spilled in western Pennsylvania on Thursday, adding to a string of recent accidents that have prompted calls for stronger safety standards. There were no reports of injury or fire after 21 tank cars came off the track and crashed into a nearby industrial building at a bend by the Kiskiminetas River in the town of Vandergrift. Nineteen of the derailed cars were carrying oil, four of which spilled between 3,000 and 4,000 gallons of oil, Norfolk Southern said. The leaks have since been plugged. The two other...

A Canadian National Railway Co train carrying fuel oil and other hazardous materials derailed and was leaking in southeast Mississippi on Friday, forcing the evacuation of nearby residents, officials said. No one was injured in the incident which involved the derailment of 21 railcars, eight of which have spilled their contents, a Canadian National Railway spokesman said. Several of the cars were carrying hazardous materials including fertilizer and methanol, but there was no fire, he said. The accident, the latest in a string of North American train derailments over the past year, occurred in the city limits of New Augusta...

SHERBROOKE, Que. — Pulling his ex-girlfriend's body from the rubble in Lac-Megantic, Que., led a young fireman to commit suicide, a coroner has ruled. The report, issued this week, follows widespread warnings about the toll that Canada's deadliest railway explosion has taken on support staff. The 25-year-old firefighter, whose name was redacted from the report, was one of the first responders to the train derailment and explosion on July 6. Forty-seven people died in the town near Quebec's border with Maine. Coroner Robert Giguere's report said the young man had only begun working as an apprentice firefighter 10 days earlier....

Energy Policy: An oil-laden train collides with another and bursts into flames in a small American town, proving why pipelines are safer and why environmentalist opposition to a pipeline from Canada is misguided. Casselton, N.D., had a near brush with tragedy after a train of tank cars carrying crude oil derailed, resulting in fiery explosions and a call from the town's mayor for a re-examination of how such fuel is transported across the United States. The railroad runs right through the middle of Casselton, a town of 2,400 people about 25 miles west of Fargo, and Mayor Ed McConnell said...

A third major explosion involving Bakken shale oil, in North Dakota on Monday night, is eliciting calls for improved safety regulations in both Canada and the U.S. The safe transport of oil by rail has been highlighted as important to B.C. by municipalities and environmentalists because an increasing amount of oil is being delivered by rail here already. There is also the prospect of a major increase in oil-by-rail shipments through B.C. if controversial pipeline projects proposed to carry bitumen to the west coast don’t materialize or are delayed. In North Dakota, most of the 2,300 residents of the town...

BREAKING NEWS: A train is derailed west of Casselton, North Dakota. It happened at 35th Street and 154th Avenue Southeast just before 2:20 p.m. Monday. Several area emergency teams are on scene and are setting up an incident command center. A viewer who is about a half mile from the derailment tells Valley News Live she can see large flames. Several train cars are on fire and huge plumes of black smoke can be seen for miles. Emergency crews are urging people to stay inside and a code red alert has been sent out to residents in a two mile...

Rail traffic may begin running through Lac-Mégantic again this week, but the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic railway has decided it will stop hauling oil after one of its trains derailed and exploded here last month. “It’s proven to be more trouble than it’s worth, and I guess that’s putting this mildly,” company chairman Ed Burkhardt said on Monday, a month after a runaway MMA train exploded downtown, killing 47 people and levelling much of the town. “We don’t plan to continue with oil transportation. That traffic is going to go other ways, not over our lines,” he said. The train...

A rail company whose runaway oil train caused a fire and explosion that killed 47 people in a small town in Canada filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and Canada on Wednesday, and an attorney said he expects company executives to explore putting it up for sale within weeks. In its filings, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd. and its Canadian counterpart, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Canada Co., cited debts to more than 200 creditors following the disaster in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Attorney Peter Flowers, who represents 30 of the victims’ families, accused company Chairman Ed Burkhardt of trying to...

Canada’s two big railroads and oil producers are pressing ahead with plans to increase the use steel-wheels-on-steel-rails to move crude even as the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic reels from what can go wrong with a crude-laden train. Canadian Pacific Railway, despite four derailments of trains carrying oil or petroleum products this year, posted a record second-quarter profit, crediting long-haul oil shipments for much of the gain, while Canadian National Railway cited oil transport as a key to its profits for the quarter. But, acknowledging the public and political demand for action, both have tightened their safety procedures for trains...

There’s a skeleton in the closet that the crude oil industry would sooner not acknowledge. In the wake of the Quebec rail disaster, which is expected to cost 50 lives and untold billions of dollars in rebuilding, compensation and litigation, the crude-by-rail-or-pipeline debate is raging in backrooms and private conversations. But none of those most closely involved wants to put the issue on the table until there has been a seemly period of grieving and a chance for the 6,000 people of Lac-Megantic to reorder their lives. Moody’s Investors Service, the rating agency, said two-thirds of North Dakota’s Bakken production,...

A deadly crude oil train disaster in Canada has brought renewed scrutiny to the growing use of rail to carry oil – including hundreds of thousands of barrels in Texas – and prompted worries that the higher volume will mean more accidents. Though rail proponents say moving crude by train is safe, federal regulators and others say that pipelines are safer, a stance that has played a role in the debate over the planned Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Texas coast. And regardless of the relative safety of the two transportation modes, the mere fact that more crude...

As the smoke clears (literally) in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, after a runaway train packed with crude oil tankers crashed July 6, the oil industry is coming to terms with a business that has perhaps grown too far too fast. The Lac-Megantic accident is shining an unwelcome spotlight on the lack of regulatory oversight on oil by rail in both the US and Canada. The fact that the rail cars (belonging to the Maine, Montreal & Atlantic rail company) that crashed and exploded were considered unfit to carry hazardous materials sharpens that focus. Getting landlocked crude out of newer fields in North...

The engineer who parked the oil train that rolled away, derailed and exploded in the center of a Quebec town was heard from Tuesday for the first time since the July 6 disaster that killed 50 people, with his lawyer saying he is "devastated."... Lawyer Thomas Walsh said Tom Harding needs time to recover from the shock. Walsh said he hopes to get psychological help for his client, who has been staying at an undisclosed location to stay away from the media. "I used the word 'devastated,' and I think that's one word that's applicable, but he's very, very low,"...

The deadly explosion of a derailed train carrying crude oil in the remote town of Lac-Megantic, Que., is likely to spark fresh arguments in the rancorous debate over the safety of the Keystone XL pipeline. "TransCanada and the other pipeline proponents are going to try to use this (accident) to boost their case, but it's a real double-edged sword for them," Keith Steward, the climate and energy co-ordinator at Greenpeace in Toronto, said. "Pipelines and rail both have safety issues and both can be a hell of a lot safer than they are today." The recent boom in oil production...

Five locomotives, the front end of a death train, sit almost completely hidden on a shabby stretch of track nestled within lakeside bush. A person could pull the stakes out of the rotting and splintered ties with one good yank. Yet this corroded rail line held fast against the wheels of a runaway train’s forward section — the stubby head of the beast — with no engineer at the switch, no human manipulating any of the route. How this severed section of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railroad freight train got to this location remains a matter of speculation. Officials...