Talk:Lac-Mégantic rail disaster/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Picture

I've been trying to find a free image for this, no luck so far. I've contacted the SQ by email to try to get this one released, but I'm not hopeful. Someone on twitter or facebook could try communicating with them also. pm (talk) 22:05, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Here's a free image (CC-BY-2.0 license): http://www.flickr.com/photos/home_of_chaos/9243170498/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:981:524D:1:4416:33C1:D9B3:B8D4 (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The Sureté du Québec finally accepted to release the image under cc-by-sa, which I think is for them a first. Thank you SQ! pm (talk) 05:28, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Map

A map of Lac Megantic with the site of the derailment and outline of the train tracks against a streetmap would be good. Also, the area burned. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 06:23, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, we won't know the area burned until the burning stops. DS (talk) 11:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The fire is under control, and is not extending beyond what was previously burnt, so unless they loose control, we know the area burnt. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 22:21, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

MMA route

I've removed this, along with the MarketWatch ref: "MMA operates between Montreal, in the west and Brownville Junction, Maine, USA, in the east." I had initially tagged the first half citation needed because I couldn't find it anywhere, although I did find a reference to Brownville (or Brownsville). It was however as the final destination of the MMA cars for this train, not its limit of operations nor the final destination of the oil. Looking at the map from MMA's website, the lines do start from Montreal, but it's messy in the east.

I still can't find any reference however that states the train had left Montreal for this particular trip. There seems to be other junctions on the map, so I can't infer anything from it. The only thing I could reliably say is something like "The train would have left MMA custody in Brownville Junction, Maine", which we don't care, although I don't mind if someone puts it back.

" Le convoi de 72 wagons-citernes et cinq locomotives était parti de Montréal, à 250 km à l'ouest, et devait se rendre sur la côte atlantique, dans le port de Saint-John (Nouveau-Brunswick)." [1] K7L (talk) 17:42, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Fine, but I wish it also gave a reference. For all we know, it came from this article. I'll add it. pm (talk) 17:52, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

5 locomotives

The refs don't actually say 5 locomotives, does anyone have one that actually says 5?--Daffydavid (talk) 21:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Both mentions of 5 locomotives are supported by two different references: the MMA's press release ("train with 72 carloads of crude oil and 5 locomotive units derailed") and a bbc article ("had five locomotive engines and 73 cars filled with light crude oil"). Is there another mention somewhere that I don't see? pm (talk) 22:56, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Apparently I need to learn how to read. Thx. --Daffydavid (talk) 04:48, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

How did the locomotives on the head end become detached or uncoupled ? We're the locomotives damaged when the eastbound train crashed into Lac Megantic?

According to #Handbrakes, the brakes were set on all five locomotives but only on 10 of the 72 cars, despite the train being parked on the mainline on a 1.2% grade. It's possible that the cars (most of which didn't have the brake manually set), moving downhill by gravity, pulled on the five engines (which all had brakes set) until the coupling released or broke? Dunno, supposedly the couplings were still usable as nine cars were pulled clear of the wreckage soon after the derailment. K7L (talk) 22:19, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps, but the train was headed eastbound towards Lac Megantic, meaning the locomotives should have lead the crash. Were the locomotives involved in the crash? And if not, how did 72 tank cars manage to get around the locomotives on single track?Bubblecuffer (talk) 01:33, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

In this picture, and unmentioned in all accounts I have read, there are what appear to be freight container wagons standing close to the derailed tanker wagons: http://static.euronews.com/articles/231172/606x341_231172_quebec-sous-le-choc-au-lendemain-de-l.jpg

Entirely possible that those boxcars aren't part of this train. There is a rail yard in the downtown with a mess of multiple tracks which form what used to be a junction with the northbound Quebec Central Railway. The northbound line is now gone, except for a short stub serving a local industrial park and a particleboard factory (tafisa.ca). Any chance those parked cars contain particleboard or other local product waiting shipment out of Lac-Mégantic, and therefore have nothing to do with the Dresden-style firebombing of this town? K7L (talk) 00:18, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

There might have been one or two boxcars between the locomotives and the train to act as a "firewall". Biscuittin (talk) 19:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

That would only account for one car, as the train consisted of five locomotives, one "buffer" car and seventy-two DOT-111A oil tankers. If there were eight boxcars in the rail yard, they're not part of this train. K7L (talk) 19:42, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Added links to Runaway Train article

I added links to Wikipedia's Runaway Train article which is a crucial fact about this event. --KJRehberg (talk) 04:25, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

There are no facts there, only a disambig page. It even explicitly states the train article has no information about runaway trains. Kind of a cool Soul Asylum song, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

It's better than nothing until someone writes a page about runaway trains, never going back. --KJRehberg (talk) 04:44, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Not so sure it's better. Doesn't the word "driverless" and the description of the accident make it clear enough, without needing a Wikilink to anything? InedibleHulk (talk) 05:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I removed the links before seeing this discussion, but they were kinda useless. pm (talk) 05:11, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

There's an expression in French, « rouler à un train d'enfer » (literally "to roll as a train of Hell", although figuratively "take off like a bat out of Hell" is closer). « Un train d'enfer » was used in 1991 in Québec in a popular song title. Un train d'enfer. A train of Hell, indeed. 2001:5C0:1000:A:0:0:0:1DA7 (talk) 23:59, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe add Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train to this playlist? Then again, runaway train really should be created as an article about rail safety instead of pointing to a list of train songs. K7L (talk) 16:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

In North American usage, the person operating a train is an engineer, not a driver. "Driverless" sounds dumb. How about, "... the train, operating without its engineer, ..." There would have been a crew of at least two, an engineer and a conductor. It's possible there would have been a brakeman (or someone with another title) but that would be rare these days. --plaws (talk) 21:08, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The engineer was alone. pm (talk) 21:30, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Someone changed it to "unattended" after I deleted "driverless". Perfect! --plaws (talk) 22:24, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

This accident is very similar to a film I saw a couple of days prior to the accident... Unstoppable (2010 film) ; a train with no operator on board, running down a mainline, going to derail on a curve in the centre of a town. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 01:02, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

"One man" operation

It's notable that this train operated with a one-man crew. That's VERY uncommon and with good reason (I am not a railroader and not in their union!). You don't want your commercial aircraft operated by a single pilot and you don't want your 78-car hazmat trains ... actually any trains that big ... operated by a single crew-member. Needs to be section on that, I think. --plaws (talk) 22:30, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

They got approval for that type of operation in Quebec just this past year [2]Bubblecuffer (talk) 01:03, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Supposedly a 1.2% grade would require handbrakes be set on 40% of the cars (based on the Jan 2012 Alberta CN runaway train investigation report) and not just the "eleven of the seventy-two cars, plus the five locomotive engines" which may have sufficed were this parked somewhere level. That raises two questions; how long would it take a single operator to manually apply the handbrakes on nearly every second car and who is in control if the train runs away while the lone operator is trying to set all of these brakes?

The one-person crew is only part of the problem; there's also the very limited expenditure on actual maintenance by this operator. If tracks and equipment are poorly maintained, things will go wrong - at which point there's either one lone person to attempt to deal with it or no one at all as an engine known to be experiencing trouble is abandoned unattended on the mainline attached to a unit train load of flammable materials. K7L (talk) 14:38, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Handbrakes

http://www.radio-canada.ca/regions/estrie/2013/07/07/007-hypothese-accident-megantic.shtml this article mentions 5 handbrakes on the engines as well 10 handbrakes on the cars. I don't see it in the Wikipedia article but I'm not adding it since I'm tired and already pulled an oops earlier. I think it should be added but I'm leaving it to someone else. --Daffydavid (talk) 06:01, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

les freins à air de toutes les locomotives et de tous les wagons étaient activés, de même que les freins à bras (mécanique) de 5 locomotives et 10 wagons: that's air brakes for all locomotives and all cars, plus (mechanical) handbrakes of all 5 locomotives and 10 cars. I don't know which oops you're talking about [edit: oh, right, your reading issues :)], but who cares. Feel free to add it. pm (talk) 06:06, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Added with ref. --Daffydavid (talk) 04:56, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Affected area

I have two wildly different maps: one from radio-canada and the other from cbc. I'm leaning towards the latter, because it's much more conservative and reports talked about four blocks leveled. If nobody objects, I'll change my map to correspond to cbc's. pm (talk) 18:30, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

It's possible the reality lies between the two... the Métro supermarket is outside the area on CBC's map but is widely reported as unusable or gone. L'Echo de Frontenac has been posting names of destroyed businesses on Twitter (although some, such as the pharmacy, are setting up temporary sites elsewhere). Still not enough info to update the town's article Lac-Mégantic to indicate whether individual buildings in that article such as the old bank and the centre sportif are still extant, unusable or gone. K7L (talk) 18:57, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

And again another one from the star, which I like much better, although it might strain my skills to reproduce. pm (talk)

Perhaps the discrepancy is that a location may have been affected enough to put it out of business without levelling the structure. Damaged or unreachable isn't necessarily "levelled". K7L (talk) 16:24, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The cbc map is in fact a kml with google maps with the caption "Inaccessible zones". So the two contenders for the affected areas right are really radio-canada and the star. The latter has a much smaller area for "scorched earth" and I'd go for it if there's no objections. pm (talk) 16:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The map from the Star better reflects the burned(destoyed) area if we compare it to photos of the damage. --Daffydavid (talk) 17:22, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I've updated the image, but I'm having issues. It looks like the full-size image is still the old one, although all the other resolutions are fine, and the thumbnails are created from the full-size. I've tried reuploading the image, which fixed the previous version, but gave me the same problem with the new one. Same thing when reverting. Adding &action=purge to the full-size url gives the right image. Does anyone have a clue or should I take this somewhere else? pm (talk) 15:26, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Seems alright now. pm (talk) 19:51, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

"No wounded. They're all dead"

I hesitated before adding this quote because I didn't want to get sensationalist and heartless. However, I think it describes really well what those people standing around in the hospital might have felt at the time. If anyone feels this is inappropriate, remove it at once. pm (talk) 19:47, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's inappropriate but I did add the 128-injured total immediately after the quote. Readers can make of that what they like. Perhaps the injuries were mostly minor and the hospitals were not receiving anyone with serious injuries or burns. Roches (talk) 14:23, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

CTV National News of 2013 - 07 - 11 - 23:00 reported 24 confirmed dead of which only one has been formally identified. Some 26 are still missing and presumed dead. CTV News even showed the faces of children who perished while asleep in their bed when their home or apartment was destroyed. Peter Horn User talk 04:20, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistent with Railway air brake?

The description of the accident in today's papers states, in essence that without a locomotive running which was attached to the parked train, the air pressure decreased and the train started rolling, leading inevitably to the accident once the engine stopped running. The article Railway air brake states that railway airbrakes are "fail-safe," in that it requires full pressure in the air cylinder on each car to release the brakes, and that a decrease in pressure in the air line from the locomotive to the cars would in fact apply the brakes. The system described in the news reports sounds like the "straight pressure" system, which generally is obsolete, since the brakes fail if the pressure drops or if the air pressure line breaks, leading to an accident from a single point of failure. Any clarification from railway industry publications would be very helpful in the article, but for now any original research about how the airbrakes work or should have worked should be kept out of the article. Edison (talk) 00:08, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I've been wondering the same thing. I've used to drive a truck with air brakes and they work the same as you describe. If an air-line breaks, if the truck is turned off, anything that results in loosing air-pressure, causes the brakes to engage and remain engaged. Dtaylor05 (talk) 00:42, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The brakes apply when air pressure in the brake pipe drops so shutting down the locomotive would have only increased the braking effort, not decreased it. Your interpretation of how the system works is incorrect Edison. Reread the article and review the part about the triple valve.--Daffydavid (talk) 07:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Updated railway company statement [3] "While the governmental investigation of the accident's cause has largely prevented MMA from completing its own investigation, one fact that has emerged is the locomotive of the oil train parked at Nantes station was shut down subsequent to the departure of the engineer who had handled the train from Farnham, which may have resulted in the release of air brakes on the locomotive that was holding the train in place". Note the phrase "air brakes on the locomotive" rather than "air brakes on the train". Does this mean that the train was being held only by the straight air brakes on the locomotive and not by the continuous air brakes on the train? Also, what was the reason for leaving an engine running? Biscuittin (talk) 12:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

According to this source: "the use of the air system makes the brake "fail safe", i.e. loss of air in the brake pipe will cause the brake to apply" so there is definitely something odd here.--Brian Dell (talk) 15:35, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

From [4] “I don’t see leakage as a problem,” said Forrest Van Schwartz, a veteran railroader and managing director of Global Transportation Consultancy LLC, based in Madison, Wisconsin. “If the brakes were properly applied before the locomotives were shut down, the loss of air might be one or two pounds over, say, an hour,” he said — a negligible effect on a system that is normally kept at a pressure of about 90 PSI. K7L (talk) 15:43, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

That would mean this train used a completely out-dated and dangerous technology. Train air brakes are normally built fail-safe and every car has own brakes. If the brakes are not fail-safe against pressure loss this is a very serious design flaw. This needs to be cleared up. 46.245.207.58 (talk)

No the brake system is not out-dated it is the system used all across North America. There is something we don't know yet that hasn't been released to the public in order for this train to run away. Loss of train line pressure means additional braking pressure. There is more to it but I suggest you read the section on Railway air brake so I don't have to explain it here.--Daffydavid (talk) 20:24, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

that is correct. In addition I want to say that the trainline connection between the locomotives and the train should have been broken after air brakes were fully set, and then the air should have been drained out of the trainline. Leaving the air connected to the locomotives, or else 'bottling' the air pressure on the train instead of draining it off, is not proper practice, in fact this could result in brakes releasing. This entire section is poorly written without understanding of railway operating procedures. Read http://www.blet75.org/2013-05-01_abth_updated.pdf and how rail freight cars air brake valves work http://techinfo.wabtec.com/datafiles/leaflets/tp-2006.pdf Ottensteiner (talk) 20:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

There are several types of air brakes. First, locomotives have a direct brake. This is as simple as it sounds: The driver opens a valve, which pushes air into the brake cylinders. If you shut down the compressor, this brake will release slowly as the system looses air. It will, however, stay applied as long as the compressor is running, if nobody changes the position of the valve.

Second, there's the train brake. It consists of a single air line which both supplies air to the cars and controls the brakes. Each car has a reservoir, which gets filled up as soon as there is air pressure. If the air pressure in the brake line drops (because the engineer opens the brake valve or because the brake line is torn apart), the brakes are applied on all cars, using the air from the reservoir of each car. However, this will only work for so long: At some point, the reservoirs of all cars will be empty due to some air loss, and the brakes will release themselves. Note: Even with an engine attached and running, you cannot fill the reservoirs of the cars without releasing the brakes! (unless you have an additional air supply line, which many passenger trains have, but not freight trains)

Bottom line: You cannot keep a train stationary forever using only the air brakes of the train. However, by keeping the locomotive running, you can use the direct brake of the locomotive to keep the train stationary. But if somebody shuts down the locomotive and nobody applies the hand brakes, things will go wrong after some time... Note that I'm not an expert for US and canadian railroads, but the air brakes are very similar all over the world. --Kabelleger (talk) 20:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

this is not right. You speak of reservoir pressure as opposed to brake cylinder pressure. When the brake cylinders are pressurized (brakes applied) the reservoir pressure is decreased or even depleted entirely - in fact a increase of reservoir pressure causes the brakes to release. There are two parts to a reservoir: one is the service, the other the emergency reservoir. When the trainline pressure decreases, the pressure from the reservoir transfers via the brake valves (there are two, one service, and one emergency valve) to the brake cylinder(s). Keeping the trainline drained (angle cocks open) will keep the brakes applied on most, if not all cars (in an ideal world, all cars, but there may be some susceptible to leaking brake cylinders). Read section 102.0 Train Operations here Air Brake and Train Handling Rules http://www.blet75.org/2013-05-01_abth_updated.pdf - the trainline connection between the locomotives and the train should have been broken, the air drained out of the trainline, the angle cock left open and a sufficient numbers of handbrakes set to secure the train. Ottensteiner (talk) 20:14, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

No you can't keep it stationary "forever" but a very long time(certainly longer than this took to happen). But this is turning into a forum so I'm done. --Daffydavid (talk) 20:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The article currently has original research regarding the brakes, with text and conclusions not in the supporting reference: " Because the air brakes were apparently not able to operate in a fail-safe manner,[not in citation given] this allowed the train to move downhill from Nantes into Lac-Mégantic once the air pressure dropped in the reservoirs on the cars.[20]" We should not be acting as an investigative task force by inserting observations in the article which do not come directly from reliable sources. Can a source be found which states " the air brakes were apparently not able to operate in a fail-safe manner," given that there are still other possibilities, like too few handbrakes were applied, or the air brakes were inadvertently released while the engine was being shut down, or the air brakes were released by persons unknown? Also, a reliable source is needed as to how long the air in the brakes would normally keep the brakes supplied after the engine was shut off. Failure in under 2 hours is pretty short per railroad employees who have posted comments on news stories, but we need identified reliable sources from the railroad industry.

Edison (talk) 15:20, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Edited to remove OR. Failure in under 2 hours is pretty much unheard of. The problem with much of the information is finding RS material. Many of the quotes are being misinterpreted or are in fact bad information despite coming from what is considered a RS. The problem with comments made by railroad employees on news stories is that some of them clearly didn't pay attention in rules class and have no idea what they are talking about. The TSB report is what we need to wait for. --Daffydavid (talk) 16:24, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

A quote to demonstrate what I meant by bad info from an RS source -“There are hand brakes on each rail car, so they had the opportunity to protect that train to keep it from rolling,” said Hinds. Without brakes, the massive rail cars can catch the wind and start moving on their own, he said. - Catch the wind? On tank cars? Not a concern in the real world. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07-11/runaway-train-in-quebec-spotlights-wild-west-era-brake-failures --Daffydavid (talk) 19:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Statements that the engine had to be running to keep air in the auxiliary reservoirs on the freightcars implies a modern "2 pipe" air system, with an air supply pipe going directly to the reservoirs, in addition to the usual brake pipe. Pressure reduction in the brake pipe operates the triple valve and applies the brakes when the pipe pressure is less than the reservoir pressure, in the original Westinghouse airbrake system, so having the engine compresser supplying full pressure in the brake air pipe would not make any sense. We need a ref stating that there were 2 air hoses going from the locomotives to each car. Then the story would start to make sense. Edison (talk) 19:27, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Not every freight train has two pipes. We can't make assumptions at this point. K7L (talk) 19:29, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

No Edison, the train had only 1 brake pipe, the railway air brake article covers it pretty good but it is confusing to those who don't work with it. Pressure maintaining is done through the engine brake valve (26L). --Daffydavid (talk) 19:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Edison. Keeping an engine running makes no sense unless the tank cars have two-pipe air brakes. Biscuittin (talk) 21:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

With one pipe, then as soon as the brake pipe pressure was higher than the reservoir pressure, as would be the case eventually if the engine compressor were running and the reservoir was losing air, the brakes would be completely released. Articles on brakes do mention that some brake systems allow the outlet from the brake cylinder to be closed, to allow the reservoir to be recharged without releasing the brakes. As I suggested above, keep an eye peeled for authoritative explanations rather than the incomplete/misleading/nonsensical explanations the press and the railroad CEO are spouting. Does Biscuittin, do you think the "engine brake valve" can send high pressure air through the brake pipe to the aux reservoir on a car without the triple valve releasing the brakes when the pipe pressure is higher than the reservoir pressure? Reference please. Edison (talk) 23:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

In any case, it would be unwise to rely on a running engine for brake force because the engine might fail for any number of reasons. Biscuittin (talk) 21:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Not sure it's worth pursuing the air brake question because the focus now seems to have shifted to handbrakes. Biscuittin (talk) 23:52, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

NO Edison and Biscuittin that is not how it works, the pressure maintaining feature of the brake valve on the engine only provides enough air flow to maintain the pressure that is lost from leakage. I have been doing this for 25 years, I would hope I understand how it works by now. You guys are barking up the wrong tree and besides this accident occurred when the engine was shutdown so I don't understand why you are concerned with this anyway. Plus I somehow managed to get drawn back into a forum-like discussion. I'm done since you keep asking the same questions and ignoring the answers.--Daffydavid (talk) 06:57, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

~~Your answers make no sense and contradict articles on the subject.~~ Please provide references other than your claimed expertise and experience in the subject. You just keep claiming to be an expert. That does not count for much on Wikipedia if you cannot articulate any explanation of what the pressure was supposed to be in the claimed single pipe that would supply air to the aux reservoirs on the cars without releasing the brakes then the pipe pressure was higher than the reservoir pressure.Edison (talk) 18:17, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I am just trying to establish why an engine was left running on an unattended train. I can't imagine it happening in Britain. Biscuittin (talk) 07:52, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/rail/2012/r12e0004/r12e0004.asp#fnb5-ref "Locomotives must be left attached with brake pipe continuity throughout the train or transfer and air brakes left applied." I will try one more time to explain but RS on this is hard to come by and I have already provided an example of a RS that is full of hot air. This is a 1 week course not a snippet on Wikipedia. In order for the brakes to release the valve has to move into the "release" position and there has to be a rise in the brake pipe(train line) of at least 3psi in order for this to happen. Without that much the valves will not move and will not release the brakes. Since there is air loss from gaskets and valves without a supply of air the brake pipe would bleed down to zero and then you would eventually have the reservoirs bleed down too. I give up on explaining it any further since railway air brake does a good job already. YOU are the one making extraordinary claims -- "2 brake pipes". The standard on North American railways is 1 brake pipe and you will note that these cars were interchanged from the CPR. Here's a link to a pic of a tank car. Notice the 1 brake pipe. http://wpmedia.business.financialpost.com/2013/02/0222tank.jpg?w=620 When you provide an RS stating there was indeed 2 brake pipes on this train then I will worry about this further. Until then have a good day. --Daffydavid (talk) 21:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I accept that there is only one brake pipe. My point is that, with a one-pipe system, there would be no point in leaving an engine running because it would not keep the reservoirs topped up. Why, then, was the engine left running? Biscuittin (talk) 22:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

For me, the running engine only makes sense if the train was being held by the straight air brake on the locomotive, rather than the automatic air brakes on the train. In this case, stopping the engine could lead to a loss of brake force through leakage. If there was insufficient handbrake force then the train could run away. Biscuittin (talk) 23:07, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Simple physics my good man. The air lost is not through the valve externally but rather back into the train line itself. Higher pressure goes to lower pressure. By maintaining the pressure through the engine brake valve (at the pressure in the brake pipe typically 65psi when a full service application has been taken - lower on the tail end due to air loss 'gradient' however for our purposes this just complicates the picture and is not required to be involved to understand the concept) ensures that the reservoirs do not lose pressure. --Daffydavid (talk) 23:54, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm getting confused. Are you saying that the brakes would remain on with 65psi in the train pipe? In that case, how would you release the brakes? Biscuittin (talk) 01:57, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_air_brake#Overview Read the 2nd and 3rd bullets. Yes the brakes stay on at 65 psi, releasing them would be through a rise in brake pipe pressure. Moving the engine brake valve handle to release would be one way to achieve this. A fully charged brake pipe is at 90 psi. Upon closer inspection I see why you guys are confused. Railway air brake is largely unreferenced and not very clear or detailed. But hey, we aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as a source anyway, especially an unreferenced one. --Daffydavid (talk) 02:29, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Daffydavid, I think I now understand. I had just asked for clarification at Talk:Railway air brake but you have answered the question. Biscuittin (talk) 02:41, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

why such strong explosions?

isn't crude oil rather sluggish as an explosive? why such powerful blasts? anyone know? Cramyourspam (talk) 00:25, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Nothing much has been reported on the explosions themselves (although I swear I've read something about a possible collision with something that had propane in it somewhere, can't find it). However, put oil in a tank, pressurize it and make it rupture, and you have an aerosolized flammable liquid flying through fire. It might not have been strictly speaking an explosion, but I don't blame them for saying that a deflagration of this size felt like an atomic bomb. pm (talk) 01:50, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The firefighters mentioned bleves at the various press releases -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 07:09, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

It's acombination of several factors - the tank is heated, its content boils, building up pressure. The pressure can be relieved by a security valve, which leads to more fire. Then the tank becomes even heater, and starts to contain more gas or even a mixture of oxygen and boiling fuel. Finally, the tank ruptures, due to the suddenly lower pressure the remaing fuel boils at once and by mixing with air it explodes. So-called fuel-air bombs use the same principle. Two videos which show the force of that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl-JgyQA7u0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf3WKTwHpIU

--46.245.207.58 (talk) 20:33, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

It is unlikely to have been a BLEVE unless the train hit a compressed gas tank. According to OGP Risk Assessment Data Directory, Report No. 434 – 7, International Association of Oil & Gas Producers, March 2010, "BLEVEs of hydrocarbons up to butane or perhaps pentane are credible. ... BLEVEs of heavier hydrocarbons such as crude oil or petroleum do not occur." It was probably a fuel-air explosion. --Heron (talk) 12:37, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

In any case, crude oil is a mixture of various different hydrocarbons, so there's no reason for there to not be lighter hydrocarbons in the mix. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 02:53, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it'll be necessary to wait for an investigation to be sure about this. Many Canadian gas stations have very large propane tanks and many stores (gas stations, convenience stores and hardware stores) have racks of barbecue-sized tanks. Some restaurants have propane tanks even in built-up areas. Roches (talk) 14:23, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Isn't the term explosion being used generally because the media doesn't know the difference between an explosion and a rapid conflagration? It's also likely being used to be sensational, not that the story isn't already quite tragic and noteworthy. If I remember correctly, crude oil isn't explosive but conflagrates. It might be beneficial to change the article to be more educational. 24.79.193.52 (talk) 17:03, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The term "explosion" is justified, based on video of the incident. Adrien Aubert's widely-reported video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRb3JHsiqfA seems to be the Zapruder film of this mass slaughter. K7L (talk) 17:21, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe this will help: http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/propane-suspected-in-explosions_2013-07-09.html Arydberg (talk) 19:32, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Unlikely, or this would have been corroborated by now. No propane tankers appear in any of the photos of the incident and there has been extensive coverage. 2001:5C0:1000:A:0:0:0:1203 (talk) 23:10, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

A propane tank was seen by the eye witness in the article. It may have been thrown a large distance by the explosion. Cal Tech spent 3 years trying to get kerosene to explode. The best they could get was a 3 mile per hour traveling wave front. Kerosene is much more volatile than crude oil. Admittedly if crude oil is atomized into a mist it will cause a fireball but the explosion must occur first. Here is a link on kerosene: http://www2.galcit.caltech.edu/EDL/projects/JetA/misconceptions.html Arydberg (talk) 02:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC) Update Update from the article, the oil was incorrectly classified "On August 1, the TSB said it has taken samples of the oil for analysis.[168] Both Canadian[169] and US investigators[170] have found the Bakken crude was not identified correctly in shipping documents,[171] and incorrectly classified to underestimate its volatility.[172]"--Mark v1.0 (talk) 18:34, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

The train's movements before the incident

The article just states that the train left Montreal, then stopped for the night at Nantes. It would be less than a 3 hour car trip. The article should state what time the train left Montreal, when that info becomes available, since that would bear on why it was necessary to stop for the night rather than continuing, along with info as to how many hours the crew had worked that day at whatever tasks. The size of the crew should also be included: driver(engineer) only, or a 2 person crew. Edison (talk) 01:58, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it was established that the engineer was the only one on the train. I think trains don't have drivers anymore. As for the route, the information is starting to be available, like the fact that it had gone through toronto earlier. The full route will likely be available eventually. pm (talk) 02:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't for a minute believe that this train was operating with an engineer only - that's very uncommon. Engineer and Conductor would be the minimum on most railroads in North America. VIA Rail Canada has some trains that operate with a single crew member in the cab, but that's a different situation. As for the route of the train, remember that this train would have been handled by multiple railroads - the MM&A does not serve North Dakota or wherever this unit train originated ... and it makes little difference. --plaws (talk) 21:14, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to disappoint: Deadly train derailment puts focus on solo-operator crews. pm (talk) 21:24, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand something else. The train left Montreal and stopped in Nantes, going east. Normally, the engines are at the front of the train, meaning they would reach Lac-Megantic first, right? So, what happened to the locomotives if the 73 cars separated from them, rolled into town at 99 km/h, and derailed? Did the locomotives whip through town without derailing? Did they turn down a different track? The story doesn't make sense unless the engines were at the west end of the train and the cars separated going into Lac-Megantic ahead of the engines, and that makes no sense either. So, I have to assume that the locomotives are in the mess in Lac-Megantic. Some light on this, anyone? GBC (talk) 01:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The accounts say that the locomotives were running ahead of the tank cars. The cars got separated from the locomotives before reaching the town. The locomotives reached the town first and passed without derailing through the site where the tank cars derailed moments later. In this interview (in French), the official MM&A spokesman assigned to the French-speaking media says that the locomotives were waiting on the tracks beyond the site (he doesn't tell where and how they stopped) and he also said that's how it was possible to confirm that their manual brakes were still applied even then. (That raises other questions, like if the tank cars were not even weighing on the locomotives and if the manual brakes of all five locomotives were applied, yet the locomotives were running at 100kmph, then if those brakes could not even hold the locomotives themselves, that braking system must be quite useless to hold a train.) The spokesman also said that the train engineer was already in Lac-Mégantic at the time of the derailment and he went to the site and separated some underailed cars from the rest of the train and he used some equipment to pull them away from the fire site (he doesn't say if he did something to the locomotives). -- Asclepias (talk) 04:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

If they were in the lead as the rail line goes uphill out of Lac-Megantic towards Maine, and the would have come to a stop eventually. However, how were they able to move cars off the back of the train? I haven't been able to find an sources on this, anyone got any leads? Bubblecuffer (talk) 02:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Putting the locomotives at the back of the train and setting the handbrake on each of them would be consistent with an outcome where the cars break from the locomotives and go careening « à un train d'enfer » into the village while the locomotives stop half a mile short. It is odd, as that would be using them to push instead of pull, but not impossible. The nine cars which were pulled off the end were pulled away not with the locomotive engine but with a rail car mover which a volunteer firefighter had borrowed from a local factory. Tafisa, the main factory in Lac-Mégantic, is on the other side of downtown - so north of the « centre sportif » and the historic rail station, along (what's left of) the former Quebec Central railway line. Unfortunately, the sources don't identify the factory specifically so don't tell on what side of the wreckage one fetches the rail car mover. K7L (talk) 05:13, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

This describes a "loader" instead of a rail car mover (from [5]) and has the locomotives stop well past the point where the cars derailed (staying on-track due to a lower centre of gravity). It doesn't indicate how this loader got to the scene - by road? It can't get there from the factory by rail as the train wreck is blocking the track. K7L (talk) 21:03, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I have read numerous accounts of train wrecks that occurred when one of the cars in the middle of the train derailed, wrecking some or all of the following cars, while the locomotive units and any remaining cars ahead of the wreck continued on their merry way down the track until stopped. I don't see why it is unlikely that the whole train careened into Lac Megantic, one of the cars in the train derailed, wrecking many of the others, the locomotives continued, and the remaining cars at the rear that weren't derailed and wrecked were pulled back the way they came with the car puller and loader. Thus, only the center of the train wrecked, the ends survived. This is a standard mode of accident. If the locomotive had derailed, it would have taken out the head of the train, but not the rear. It is very rare for all of the cars to derail and wreck, unless the train if very short. .45Colt 17:43, 5 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by .45Colt (talk • contribs)

Lac-Mégantic, Quebec; and other related articles...

Please remember to update Lac-Mégantic, Quebec to make sure the summary of this incident is up to date, and to add to that article, information about the town that is now being featured in derailment coverage (like how MusiCafe was central to town life, etc) -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 08:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Also please remember to update related articles on regions impacted by this event (such as the oil spilled into the river and evacuations of nearby communities) -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 09:49, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Musi-Café is not a notable historic landmark in Mégantic and would not merit encyclopaedia coverage outside of its proximity to this specific derailment. Tourism to this region seems to be based mostly around hunting and fishing. No one is going to drive 100km east of Sherbrooke just to find a bar unless they have some other reason to visit the region. The Lac-Mégantic article is about the town, not about the derailment. Update what's already covered on those pages (for instance, if a historic building already listed is gone), but don't add derailment info that merely duplicates this page. K7L (talk) 14:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

DOT 111

Can someone start an article on the DOT-111? the type of oilcar involved in the derailment. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 08:14, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

No idea myself about the subject or whether it's notable, so I've posted your request to Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains/Todo/Write#Write - unpowered rolling stock and Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Transport#Rail transport--A bit iffy (talk) 08:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I have started the article as a sub-section of tank car. Please expand it if you can. Biscuittin (talk) 12:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

From the TSB newsconference, apparently, this is called TC-111/TC 111/TC111 in Canada instead of DOT111, and generally is called 111-class/111 class -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 00:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Tampering or terrorism?

Some reports suggest engines might have been tampered with. There have been plots to derail trains in Canada before, and a number of suspicious explosions such as West Texas and Mobile Alabama oil barges that have not been explained. How often do idling locomotives just catch fire because of a oil or fuel leak? Redhanker (talk) 21:12, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Back in April there was that alleged Via Rail plot. Perhaps somebody had watched Mayday (TV series), episode 12 of season 3 on the San Bernardino train disaster? Abductive (reasoning) 21:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Quite often, apparently: Since 2005, he said, the unit has extinguished four fires on MMA trains, including the one Friday night. Each fire was caused by problems in fuel or oil lines. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. pm (talk) 21:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Le communiqué: "Pour la libération immédiate : Daté : Dimanche 7 juillet 2013 : 16H15 EST..." (MMA press release, the French goes downhill from there, per [6]). Hmmm... last organization I heard demanding "immediate liberation" from the yoke of Canadian oppression was the FLQ, the terrorist front from the October Crisis of 1970. Maybe this MMA thing is a foreign terrorist organisation looking to harm Canadian civilians? K7L (talk) 22:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Please see WP:NOTFORUM. If you wish to speculate, do so elsewhere. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Besides, that's just a bad translation of the phrase "for immediate release" as typically shown on press releases. DS (talk) 12:50, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

CNN is reporting that the police say there was tampering. Daniel Case (talk) 23:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

The allegation appears to be originating from Ed Burkhardt, chief executive officer and president of Rail World, the parent company of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway. No idea why a police officer would repeat this as fact, given that it was largely debunked a day ago, and this is the only instance it's been presented as anything but a quote from the railway owner. It looks primarily like an attempt to evade Res ipsa loquitur#Exclusive control civil liability (basically, if the railway were the only ones to have control of that train, the initial assumption in a civil suit is that they're the only who could be responsible for what has happened).

Certainly, the SQ is treating this as a criminal investigation "on an unprecedented scale" - and this from the outset, solely due to the amount of damage. Then again, a mere suspicion of "criminal negligence causing death" would be grounds enough for police to investigate.[7] I doubt that any of these "tampering" or sabotage theories are officially supported by the SQ at this time, and the claims by the railway itself are already in the article. There isn't enough in this one source to justify changing that. K7L (talk) 23:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

If terrorism were any sort of concern, would the railroad routinely leave a train unattended for hours on the main line with the engine running and the door unlocked? See Attractive nuisance doctrine. Edison (talk) 15:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The railway would likely do exactly that, but then refuse to inform the municipalities (or provinces/states) through which these trains pass of what hazards or flammables are aboard or provide them with freight timetables, citing "security reasons". See security through obscurity. Furthermore, trains are still left running, unlocked and unattended, in the area per [8]. Nothing has changed. K7L (talk) 14:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

An article about the engineer, Harding, said that he stopped over in the town of Lac Megantic once or twice a week, so leaving the train idling on the main line appears to have been a constant occurrence. Edison (talk) 18:09, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The article does not mention where exactly the train was left and as we know there is a siding there. Unless you have a different source your comment is purely an assumption on your part.--Daffydavid (talk) 00:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I was under the impression that leaving the locomotive running was standard procedure for most railroads. I know when I questioned it, I was told that the engineer removes the reverser lever so there is no way you can actually drive the locomotive. Even if you could, you would have to go and release all the hand-brakes first. Worst you can do is shut it down, which is another reason I doubt that doing so could cause the train to begin to roll. Unless they are operating under the assumption that there would be enough handbrakes applied to keep it from moving even if shutting down the locomotive caused the air brakes to eventually fail. Something doesn't seem to add up, in any case, but I don't think leaving the locomotive running had anything to do with why it rolled, and leaving the door unlocked may well be BECAUSE someone may need to gain access to shut the engine down for some reason. If the engineer had applied enough hand brakes, even if something was wrong with the air brakes so they failed when the engine was shut down, the train wouldn't have started to roll. But I hesitate to apply too much blame to someone who is already responsible for something like this, even assuming that it was his fault. Accidents happen; sometimes you wreck your truck when it rolls away. Sometimes you kill someone. Sometimes you kill a hundred-something people, and that can't be easy to live with. .45Colt 18:08, 5 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by .45Colt (talk • contribs)

Where do you get "sometimes you kill a hundred-something people"? MM&A only incinerated 47 méganticois alive and obliterated half the downtown, with the rest so oil-contaminated it's likely history. That said, these were SPTO (single person train operation) and the handbrakes take about 2.5 minutes per car to manually set (there are 72 cars, 1 buffer, 1 remote control, 5 locomotives). Are these cheapskates willing to pay their engineer for the extra hour or more at the end of the day to set the hand brakes on every second car - and pay the next engineer who takes over for the extra hour plus to release those brakes manually before taking the train back into the US? It's entirely possible that they told this person to set some arbitrary number of brakes which proved to be inadequate (as this is on a 1% grade which continues for several miles right into downtown Mégantic, ending at a sharp curve in the track on main street) and just leave one of the engines running on the presumption the air brakes would hold the train. Unfortunately, it looks like MM&A's defective engine caught fire, the fire brigade had to shut it down to extinguish the blaze, the rail people who showed up after the initial fire were a track maintenance crew who knew nothing about tying down a train and it was all downhill from there. This isn't an isolated incident created by one person. There was a huge amount of cost cutting for many years. CP dumped this money-losing line in 1994 for a reason. MM&A wasn't the first to go bankrupt on this operation; Iron Road had already set the standard for deferred maintenance, red ink and the slow death of the line by the time it was bankrupted in 2002. MM&A only continued the tradition, but with twice the short-staffing due to remote control and SPTO. One can only cut so far. K7L (talk) 16:52, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Please heed WP:NOTFORUM--Daffydavid (talk) 05:41, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

video

CBS posted this video courtesy of Adrien Aubert. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50150531n 108.56.212.179 (talk) 23:10, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

That's appeared on various sites, including Radio-Canada news and YouTube. I think someone already tried to link to the youtube version from this article but was reverted by an obnoxious 'bot. K7L (talk) 23:12, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I would include the cbsnews.com link, the original .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:16, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

CBS doesn't look to be "the original". They're foreign media reporting an already widely-cited video. R-C actually talked to Adrien Aubert, the creator of the original video, according to http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/shocking-new-lac-m%C3%A9gantic-explosion-video-emerges-1.1364404 so they're a little closer but the original source is Aubert much like the Zapruder film originated with a bystander with a home movie camera. K7L (talk) 15:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Stating the country in the lead

The reference to Canada has been deleted from the lead twice.[9][10] Why is is not pertinent to make it clear where in the world the event happened? It is a basic trivial fact and provides context for the entire article, as indicated in Wikipedia:LEAD. It is also usual to mention the country in the lead in similar articles, e.g.:

Nishapur train disaster: "…in the village of Khayyam, near Nishapur in Iran, on…"
Viareggio train derailment: "…in a railway station in Viareggio, Lucca, a city in Central Italy's Tuscany region."
Los Alfaques disaster: "…in Alcanar, near Tarragona, in Spain."
Neuhausen railway station: "…in the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen…"
2013 Saltsjöbanan train crash: "…into a block of flats in Saltsjöbaden, Sweden."
Badrashin railway accident: "…near Badrashin station in Giza, Egypt, on…"

But sometimes it is left out, perhaps by mistake:

2013 Buenos Aires rail disaster: "…in Buenos Aires Province, near Castelar station about 30km (19 miles) from Buenos Aires."
Fairfield train crash: "…between the Fairfield Metro and Bridgeport stations." The lead of this article didn't clearly mention the city, let alone the state or country, until I added it. Fairfield is a common place name, by the way.

So why shouldn't we provide this context in the lead here? —sroc (talk) 23:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Buenos Aires is already widely known enough that it isn't necessary to spell out its role as the capital of Argentina. All of the other examples you list are obscure places, which is why they're spelled out. K7L (talk) 23:43, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I presume you don't think the town of Lac-Mégantic is well known on the same scale.

The Canadian province is the most well-known "Quebec", but there are others, including a community in Montana, a village in Connecticut, several villages in England including in County Durham. Is there really any harm in including the word Canada in the lead to make this clear? —sroc (talk) 00:07, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I would also point out that several places are named in the subsequent section, but the names of their respective countries are not identified. The only such references are the "United States-based" railway and "the Canadian government", leaving the reader to read between the lines to understand in which country each event has taken place, unless they can infer it by knowing the place names already. —sroc (talk) 00:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Nothing outside Canada is particularly well-known under the moniker "Québec", much like Mexico City isn't going to be immediately presumed to be Mexico, Maine or Mexico (village), New York. It's a bit of a stretch to presume Québec is going to be assumed to be in England. K7L (talk) 00:12, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

But is there any good reason to exclude this information? —sroc (talk) 00:14, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Already in the infobox. K7L (talk) 00:17, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Infoboxes are not meant to exclude information from the article and not a good reason for leaving contextual information out of the lead. —sroc (talk) 00:21, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

More examples:

2012 Burlington VIA derailment: "…in the Aldershot neighborhood of Burlington, Ontario, Canada, resulting…"
Sloterdijk train collision: "…at Westerpark, near Sloterdijk, in the west of Amsterdam, Netherlands."
2012 Buenos Aires rail disaster: "…in the Balvanera neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina."
2010 Moscow Metro bombings: refers to "Moscow Metro" but then also mentions "Russian officials" and "the Russian capital" in the lead.
June 2009 Washington Metro train collision: "…in Northeast, Washington, D.C., United States."
Newton, Massachusetts train collision: "…in Newton, Massachusetts, United States."
2008 Chatsworth train collision: "…in the Chatsworth district of Los Angeles, California, in the United States."

You'd expect people know where Ontario, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires (again), Moscow, Washington DC, Massachusetts and California are, but we say it just the same. —sroc (talk) 00:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I've put it back into the lead. Abductive (reasoning) 01:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I've added the comma after "Canada" per Wikipedia:COMMA. —sroc (talk) 01:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Canada has been removed from the lead again. Biscuittin (talk) 18:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

It's entirely unnecessary to say "Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada"; it is also long and clumsy for reading. Some examples have been provided above of articles that use the country's name in their leads; however, only three are relevant, since the others don't show [Town], [Province/State], [Country]. Of the three that do, they're anomolies; one does not normally see "[Town], [State], United States" or "[Town], [Country], United Kingdom"; it is usually just something like "Chicago, Illinois", "London, England", "Branson, Missouri", etc. If anyone wants to know what country Quebec is in, all they need do is look a few millimeters to their right and see it in the infobox. Alternately, they can simply click on the linked word "Quebec". --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 18:38, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

What does the AP Stylebook say to do? Abductive (reasoning) 19:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

in my experience the average US college student can not identify any Canadian province. Leave the word Canada in the article lead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.78.45.67 (talk) 03:10, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

That's not a valid argument for its inclusion. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 03:29, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

That's not a valid argument for its exclusion. —sroc (talk) 05:53, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't designed to cater solely to US college students. That said, there should be consistency across Wikipedia articles and, presently, there isn't. Not every location is as widely known as Toronto, New York, London, or Moscow. For example, does everyone know where Kazan is? How about Sana Rudravaram‎? No? Then perhaps the standard should be full identification, including country (for all relevant articles including US subjects). Does anyone have a MOS reference we could point to? I don't have time to wade through it right now. Taroaldo ✉ 03:38, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

The latter list of examples are all the rail accidents from the templates since 2008 in major (well known) cities. They don't all use [city], [state/province], [country] format, but they all specify the country in the lead in some way, shape or form. All but one have an infobox listing the country, but this doesn't justify leaving it out of the lead altogether. This is also important to ensure that the article reflects a worldwide view ("Think from a global perspective") and doesn't assume knowledge based on a particular region. —sroc (talk) 05:44, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I've just had a look through the MOS and found nothing to address this point, so I've posted a query at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Place_names_and_specificity. Personally I think it is obvious that a proper encyclopedic style requires the country to be mentioned in this situation. When I see "Lac-Mégantic, Quebec" without the country, it makes me think (whether it's true or not) that the writer is attempting to inject a separatist POV into the sentence. --174.88.134.93 (talk) 06:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Based on the responses so far to the Village Pump query, the MOS is indeed silent on this subject. --174.88.134.93 (talk) 09:05, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

extended text

[edit: The following paragraph has been removed twice now. I did not intend to offend anyone. I was merely being facetious by mentioning Godwin's Law (which humorously states that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1) as a way of notifying the various editors that the discussion was not productive anymore. pm (talk) 22:01, 13 July 2013 (UTC)]

This is quite an impressive discussion so far, I didn't think separatism would come into play so soon and I'm hoping we can dispense with the Nazis. Can we agree that formally specifying the country with the name of the city (as Lac-Mégantic, Québec, Canada) might be unwieldy, but that mentioning the country in the lead is an important piece of information?

If so, then what I'm seeing right now (deadliest in Canada) is a rather good compromise and I'm happy with it. pm (talk) 11:29, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

[edit: removed gross personal attack]

I indented and rearranged the previous response so it doesn't split my message in two. This was also posted to my talk page, where I responded. I will not contribute to this thread further. pm (talk) 04:37, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree, it doesn't need to be in the form "Lac-Mégantic, Québec, Canada", as long as Canada is mentioned, as is consistent from the examples shown above. In this case, the reference to Canada (three sentences later) isn't as proximate to the name of the town as the other examples (which are usually in the same sentence, except the 2010 Moscow Metro bombings), but I would think what we have now is clear enough. —sroc (talk) 11:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm fine with mentioning the country once; no need to repeat it to the point where it's in the infobox twice and in the text body repeatedly. K7L (talk) 14:45, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Check the French article, it's good that way. "Lac-Mégantic, Québec (Canada)." If it's good in the French article then it's good here.99.199.237.60 (talk) 14:47, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

If it's to be incorporated, I suggest:

The Lac-Mégantic derailment occurred in the town of Lac-Mégantic, located in the Eastern Townships of the Canadian province of Quebec, at approximately 01:15 EDT...

--Ħ MIESIANIACAL 00:13, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Thumbs up to that! I like it!99.199.237.60 (talk) 01:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

As it's still there today, I assume everyone else here is satisfied with the edit. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 16:42, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

File:Lac megantic affected area.png

This image shows damage to the north and west of Rue Frontenac. From every image I can find the damage starts pretty much right where the red star is located. Anyone else see this or is it just me?--Daffydavid (talk) 05:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

See Talk:Lac-Mégantic_derailment#Affected_area above. pm (talk) 14:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Name of Engineer relevant?

It says in the referred article that the name of the engineer is Tom Harding. Futher on in that article it says that the train company refuses to hand out the name of this person. A contradiction? Is the name correct? In any case, i dont think the name is relevant, and it should be removed. Franke 1 (talk) 20:38, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I removed the name. Taroaldo ✉ 04:59, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

The name appears again in the section "Aftermath". It also appears in the cited reference. Should it be removed from the Wikipedia article? Biscuittin (talk) 08:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

The engineer has been mentioned in the media quite a lot: he apparently risked his live to move cars out of the fire, he's being blamed by the MMA, was fired yesterday and police is thinking about prosecuting him. So yes, as the last person who operated the train before the disaster, I think he's important. pm (talk) 11:37, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

You need to be careful with some of those claims... they're being made not on the basis of police investigation, but by the owner of the railway in order to deflect attention from himself and the company. If unit train loads of flammables are being left unattended at the top of a 1.2% 14km grade overnight on a near-daily basis, that decision was made by the company and not just unilaterally by one engineer. The company has flip-flopped from engineer-as-hero to engineer-as-villain very rapidly, but likely to save their own miserable hide in a criminal negligence investigation. K7L (talk) 15:04, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not commenting on whether all this happened or not, I'm just saying he's notable in the context of the article. The original question was whether the name of the engineer was relevant. pm (talk) 15:20, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Its good to see that the name now have been removed. Lets wait and see how this occurrence unfolds, bearing in mind that a criminal investigation is on-going, and under such circumstances, caution is always adviced. Maybe in the end he will be a hero, and in that case he might even have his own article. But for now, it should be left out. Franke 1 (talk) 15:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

The name of the engineer belongs in the article. It has been reported in over 6,000 news stories, per Google News.. We cannot "unring the bell" and keep his name a secret, nor should we try. We do not have to wait a year or whatever for some final report and for all legal cases to be concluded. We list the names of airplane pilots and ship captains who are in charge when disaste3rs happen, so I see no reason not to include the name of the engineer in this case, since we also list the names of the Director of the railroad, the local fire chief who fought the fire in the engine after turning off the engine, and the railroad CEO. This amounts to censorship, and is unencyclopedic. The Wikipedia servers are in the US, not in Canada where the judicial doctrine Sub judice prevents news media mentioning the names of those suspected of something. In this case, his name has even been reported in Canadian papers. Edison (talk) 19:09, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

There's WP:BLP to consider. Much of what MMA has been saying is contradictory; he's a hero one day and a criminal the next? The railway CEO's latest claim that the engineer is under "police control" could well be just plain libel, unless we can find a WP:RS to say that the police confirm any of this based on actual evidence. MMA is trying to cover itself by hanging this one employee out to dry. We shouldn't be complicit in that but should wait for the facts. K7L (talk) 19:14, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I do not see a BLP issue in reporting the name as reported by reliable sources. As to varying statements by MMA, we can report them along with any official government statement or statements by industry experts which may disagree with them.We are not a spokesperson for the [police, so we do not have to base our article exclusively on statements (official or "leaked " anonymously to reporters) by the police. Edison (talk) 19:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

No reliable source is at this time willing to stick its neck out and say it's all this one engineer's fault. It's all 'we said that the MMA guy said...' so that the media can plead ignorance if MMA turns out to be making questionable allegations or changing its story repeatedly. We are not spokespersons for the police, but we do require reliable sources actually stand behind the facts claimed, especially when dealing with BLPs. K7L (talk) 19:37, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, this is not a BLP. Secondly, we follow the sources as opposed to substituting our own unsourced opinion about whether there is some agenda to "hand the employee out to dry." We are not here to lobby for a trade union anymore than for an employer. If the tabloids were going with the name and the more highbrow sources were not, there would be an argument for exclusion, but I see Reuters is naming names. Thirdly, a company doesn't gain anything in terms of legal liability by such a move anyway, see Vicarious_liability#Employers.27_liability. Fourthly, initially the company endeavored to provide an explanation that largely absolved its own staff, it was only after it became apparent that the the hand brakes could not have been adequately set that it acknowledged that it must have been its employee and that the employee was not a reliable source for what was done or not done.--Brian Dell (talk) 02:35, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:BLP applies to all articles which describe living people, whether or not they are biographies. As for sources, http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/11/lac_megantic_explosion_five_residents_mistakenly_listed_as_presumed_dead.html reports one Journal de Montréal edition was using Facebook as a "journalistic source" and reported five living persons as dead. Sadly, a paper reporting MMA CEO Burkhardt's ravings as if they were fact is just as unreliable - he does not have access to the crime scene and has no clue how many handbrakes were actually set (or how many needed to be set), yet he's already convicted the engineer in the press of fifty counts of criminal negligence causing death (which, if true, would be more deadly as homicide than the Robert Pickton serial killing spree) and made claims that this person is under "police control" which could well be libel. We do need to tread carefully here. The sources are wording this very carefully so that they themselves are not confirming or denying the allegations MMA is making, but they have strict editorial controls in place to ensure what is printed is at the edge of the law but no further. We don't have that luxury. K7L (talk) 14:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

As the header implies, the name is not relevant, and should be kept out for that reason as long as the story unfolds. As we do try to be a dictionary, the different steps and events in this story are much more relevant than one persons name. It is not important to the story as such if he´s name was Joe or Jack, "Engineer" is just fine. There are other important persons possibly involved here too, for example the person that turned the #5 locomotive off, and the person that declared the train to be safe. They are also major players in this, and also not relevant by names. Franke 1 (talk) 20:44, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Your position is at odds with the practice in other articles I've seen about transport disasters where the names of airplane pilots, ship captains, or locomotive engineers are published. Do you claim we should go to all the other transit accident articles and remove the names of the personnel in charge at the time the accident occurred? They are obviously relevant, which is why over 6000 news stories include the engineer's name at this point.We certainly do not "try to be a dictionary." The chief of the fire crew which turned off the locomotive to fight the fire has been published as well and was in the story at last viewing. S Edison (talk) 23:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

In the end, he will ofcourse be an important figure in all this, but untill the true occurancese have been sorted out, and he´s (and others) responsibilities have been sorted out, the names should be left out.193.241.8.242 (talk) 10:24, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Here's a Canadian wire service story about the engineer, which was carried by several papers: [11]. Giving the engineer's name is not equivalent to saying the accident is his fault. In fact, we can quote reliable press stories that state no blame has been assigned at this time, such as " Mr. Harding has not been charged with a crime, nor has the Transportation and Safety Board assigned any blame in its investigation." from The Globe and Mail. July 11, 2013, to provide balance to the accusations being slung about by the railroad CEO Burkhardt, first against the firemen who shut off the burning engine to extinguish the fire, and then against the engineer who routinely parked the engine at the location. An article in the Wall Street Journal on July 11 about the engineer gives more details of his personal life and career. He is clearly a central figure in coverage of the event everywhere but in Wikipedia. Here is an article about the engineer and a previous derailment he was associated with. Edison (talk) 17:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

So the Québécor rag has decided that the engineer "is under criminal investigation" without indicating their source for this claim. Lovely... the crash is under criminal investigation, but I have a sneaking suspicion the cops aren't going to point fingers at one person (to the exclusion of others) until they've actually had the chance to investigate. There is a criminal investigation, but it goes far beyond this one person. MMA would love to pin the whole thing on one guy and walk away, but that doesn't make their version the truth. Naming names means meeting a high standard of WP:RS as it subjects the article to WP:BLP... which isn't consistent with believing everything one reads in the Journal de Montréal or similar tabloids. K7L (talk) 19:21, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Let's keep cool folks. What I don't understand is that if the engineer's name is mentioned in a reliable source, it is fine to include it in the article. Whether he's under investigation, if this is all his fault, if he's a hero or just a nobody, it remains that he is an important part of this event. I see no problem at all with including his name, as long as we're careful with original research. pm (talk) 20:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

disputed edit re company's position on setting of hand brakes

Re this edit, according to this source "The railroad initially blamed the catastrophe on the failure of the train's pneumatic airbrakes after an engine fire, but the company acknowledged on Wednesday that the train's engineer did not apply an adequate number of handbrakes to hold the train in place, and failed to comply with regulations."--Brian Dell (talk) 02:03, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I suspect "the company acknowledged on Wednesday" should be "the company claimed on Wednesday". We have no way to know whether Wednesday's story from this company is any more truthful than Monday's story. For all we know, the Farnham dispatcher could have ordered the engineer to leave the train idling on the mainline, held (supposedly) by the air brake. Time will tell. K7L (talk) 04:48, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

We should avoid loaded and judgmental terms such as "claimed" or "admitted" and stick with neutral terms such as "said" or "stated." Even "acknowledged" sounds like an admission of fault. Edison (talk) 01:50, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

An article on July 11 discusses the 7 most serious runaway trains in Canada since 2006. Sometimes the airbrakes or handbrakes on the freightcars were defective, and other times a train was left standing on an incline with an inadequate number of handbrakes applied. Sometimes the railroad's rules called for an inadequate number of handbrakes to be set, then the crew did not even apply that many. Even after noting that the rules specified an inadequate number of handbrakes, Canadian railroad regulators did not issue new rules specifying an adequate number of handbrakes. Edison (talk) 18:04, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the government's rules actually don't explicitly indicate how many handbrakes are, at minimum, enough. Some railways specify this locally as their own policy. Take a look at the TSB reports for previous runaway train incidents which mention the "section 122" requirements. If MMA told this guy to set handbrakes on 11 cars of a 72-car train, plus the engine, that's only every seventh car - which might be fine in Saskatchewan (which is largely flat) but not on a 1.2% grade in Estrie, Québec. I'm amazed disaster was averted the last three times (in eight years) the Nantes fire brigade extinguished this train. It's a little like constructing floodwalls in Hurricane Katrina-era New Orleans - going 14 feet into the ground is enough in solid rock, but the soil in the area was mud and sand. K7L (talk) 19:34, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Removed "recommendations" section

I removed the recommendations section. It was written with a biased tone and cited a page that specifically says the investigation is ongoing. Transportation safety agencies don't issue recommendations a few days after a disaster. --71.97.52.154 (talk) 06:12, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The cited source, http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/enquetes-investigations/rail/2013/R13D0054/R13D0054.asp is about the federal investigation in progress and should not have been removed as it appears to be valid info. Title the section "investigation" instead of "recommendation" but please do not remove content like this. K7L (talk) 06:17, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Done. Biscuittin (talk) 11:37, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Out-of-date image being displayed

The "Area affected by the fires" image "Lac megantic affected area.png" being displayed for me is the version of 21:42 on 7 July, not the current one. Is this happening for anyone else? I can't figure out what's happening. I've tried purging the article, even clearing my cookies, but it still won't show the current image.--A bit iffy (talk) 11:30, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The same is happening for me - see my comments at bugzilla:49362. Thryduulf (talk) 11:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks — not just me then. As temporary workaround while waiting for the bugfix, would somebody be able to save the up-to-date file to, say, "Lac megantic affected area 2.png" and link to that instead? (Can't do it myself — don't have suitable computer.) The article is highish-profile in that it's still linked from the main page.--A bit iffy (talk) 14:39, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I noticed it takes about 12h to see changes when I upload a new version. Anyways, I just changed the thumbnail size to 221px to force it to be recreated. Did that help? pm (talk) 18:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

It did indeed — thanks!--A bit iffy (talk) 21:34, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Style

Is it a Wikipedia style guideline that images be alternately left and right? I hate images on the left because they break up the text. Biscuittin (talk) 22:18, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Red Zone

Map needed

It is requested that a map or maps be included in this article to improve its quality.
Wikipedians in Quebec may be able to help!

Do we have a map of the initial Red Zone (the area closed by Police; different from the area burnt, and larger) -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 02:56, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Photos

I've added 7 photos related to the derailment on Commons. They're not that great, but they'll help you illustrate some points made in the article. Available there. Bouchecl (talk) 06:05, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Merci! Interesting that the tourism bureau insists « La qualité de l’air et de l’eau ne présentent aucun risque pour la santé. Le lac Mégantic se prête aux activités nautiques, dont la baignade. » [12] while the photos show a huge cleanup in progress on the shore. Ça baigne dans l'huile like a well-oiled machine, alors tout va bien? K7L (talk) 19:03, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

In fairness, only the lake shore adjacent to the historic downtown of Lac-Mégantic, including the local marina, is surrounded by booms. From my vantage point, a few hundred metres away from the red zone, the water was clear and the shore was not covered by any residue from the explosion. Bouchecl (talk) 20:05, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

More buildings

"Most of the 40 homes destroyed by the blast no longer exist, says Brunet, so finding remains is next to impossible. “The houses have completely disappeared,” he says. “There is nothing left. Not even a book or a piece of paper.” - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/16/inside-the-brutal-clean-up-efforts-in-lac-megantic.html

The Globe and Mail says "More than 100 homes and 30 buildings were destroyed in the fires." -- so is the damage now "130 buildings" ? (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-mystery-fire-the-locomotives-air-brake-and-the-search-for-survivors/article13059722/) DS (talk) 22:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Might be best to be careful how this is worded... an apartment located atop an obliterated commercial business does count as a destroyed home without adding yet an additional building to the count. The Globe & Wail piece is likely an outdated estimate in any case. K7L (talk) 22:54, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Change title to "disaster" instead of "derailment"

Is there a reason why the title of this article is "Lac-Mégantic derailment" instead of something like "Lac-Mégantic rail disaster"? I think it certainly qualifies as a disaster, no? And using "disaster" in the title would certainly be consistent with other articles about rail accidents of this scale. Geoff Olynyk (talk) 16:33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

That takes it from a simple description to a sensational title, but maybe that is appropriate. Some examples of train wrecks have "disaster" in the title can be found by starting with Lists of rail accidents, a collection of lists by era. Some editors like to call train wrecks with no widespread destruction of nonrailroad property and a handful of deaths, similar to the toll from a housefire or a motor vehicle wreck, a "disaster." As examples of low death toll incidents without mass injuries and property damage which Wikipedia calls "disasters," one finds at the beginnings of railroading the 1847 Dee Bridge disaster where 5 were killed and a bridge fell. In the Hawes Junction train disaster in 1910, 12 were killed. In the Nidareid train disaster of 1921, six died. In the 1944 Soham rail disaster 2 died. In the Hjuksebø train disaster of 1950, 14 died. In the Tretten train disaster of 1975, 27 died. In the Nijmegen train disaster of 1979, 8 died. In the 1980 Winsum train disaster, 9 died. In the 1985 HaBonim disaster, 22 were killed. In the Forst Zinna rail disaster of 1988 six died. In the 1989 San Bernardino train disaster six died in 2 incidents. . A few "disasters" have apparently been appropriately moved (renamed) to descriptive titles. It may be satisfying to editors who are rail fans to describe relatively minor incidents as "disasters," though that demeans cases of massive damage and mass deaths. The greatest death toll which is just an "accident" or "crash" or "derailment" is Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne derailment with over 700 per the article or "800-1000" in the table in List of accidents and disasters by death toll#Rail accidents and disasters, which doesn't list those with death tolls under 90. In this case, I could certainly support it being a "disaster," especially if it is commonly named as such in mainstream news and in any future legislation or book coverage. Edison (talk) 01:49, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

In Google News I find numerous stories calling it a disaster in so many words. There's "Railway involved in Lac-Mégantic disaster lays off staff as traffic slows" in the Globe and Mail, "Lac-Megantic disaster site latest visitor draw" in Canadian Press at GlobalNews.ca. There is "First glimpse at Lac-Megantic disaster site shows scale of devastation in Bangor News. Edison (talk) 03:53, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

The incident is certainly on the scale of a disaster. I would have no objection to the change. Taroaldo ✉ 04:02, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Aftermath

This article may be useful for expansion. Mjroots (talk) 20:09, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

As seen from space

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=81581 This NASA Earth Observatory page compares images from July 4 and July 6. Despite cloud cover, the fire can be seen in the July 6 image. Worth mentioning in the article? Eastmain (talk • contribs) 01:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Already mentioned, I'd expect. That image was uploaded here. K7L (talk) 01:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Can this before/after photo give an estimate of the amount of energy released? For my question of TNT equivalent. --Mark v1.0 (talk) 23:09, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Response section

There has been consistent near vandalism of the aftermath section by a problematic monarchist editor (User:Miesianiacal). Looking over this editors edit history there seems to be only one goal for this editor, that is promoting the British monarchy. This editor has repeatedly adding his monarchist edits to this article, it has been reverted numerous times, yet this editors continues to add the same edit over and over. The aftermath section shows the PM Stephen Harpers press conference on July 7th, followed by the queen of Englands and others statement July 8th. This editor continues to vandalize the aftermath section by bringing the queen of Englands statement to the start with no explanation except to satisfy his odd fixation with the queen of England. As mentioned, looking over the history of this article, this addition by this editors has been revert countless times, yet they continue to vandalize the article with the same edit. Any further vandalism by this editor (User:Miesianiacal) should be reported to an administrator. 99.242.66.218 (talk) 05:51, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

1) You cannot refer to a content-related disagreement as "vandalism"

2) Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada Taroaldo ✉ 08:05, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. Please don't leave edit summaries like "05:38, 20 July 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-392)‎ . . Lac-Mégantic derailment ‎ (Revert edits by problematic monarchist editor back to consensus)" if there has been no discussion and no consensus. Comments like "(cur | prev) 17:41, 18 July 2013‎ 138.34.6.2 (talk)‎ . . (62,688 bytes) (+33)‎ . . (Revert vandalism. There is no reason whatsoever for this edit. Concensus is against it.) (undo)" are also not constructive, as a content dispute is not vandalism. K7L (talk) 11:23, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

When an edit has been consistently reverted every time by multiple editors, this can be viewed as a consensus. Repeated removal of content and promotion of self interest info that has been repeatedly reverted can be viewed as vandalism. 99.242.66.218 (talk) 14:53, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

The same editor coming in from two different anon-IP addresses does *not* constitute a consensus. Please stop leaving deliberately misleading edit summaries, such as "(cur | prev) 14:59, 20 July 2013‎ 99.242.66.218 (talk)‎ . . (75,900 bytes) (+439)‎ . . (revert content removal.) (undo)". Moving content from one section to another does *not* constitute content removal. K7L (talk) 15:11, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Seems that the present order is fine; Canadian Prime Minister, former colonial power and present monarch (Britain), former-former colonial power (France), neighbor (US). However, the powerless people such as Princes and their wives are not so important. They should be removed. Abductive (reasoning) 16:28, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Seems to me the "powerless people" are the citizens of Lac-Mégantic, not the princes and presidents. K7L (talk) 16:43, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Do try to present accurate facts in your arguments K7L as I also reverted this edit and I am in no way an anon-IP. Also don't criticize others for the same thing you are guilty of (snide edit summaries). I don't have any view on who is more important but the order with Harper first is chronologically correct. Why (User:Miesianiacal) keeps changing it is for him to say, but his argument about his way being more accurate chronologically is false. --Daffydavid (talk) 05:30, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The edit summaries I quoted here weren't snide, they were misleading. K7L (talk) 05:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Wow, what a collection of false accusations that have been laid against me here. ("Problematic monarchist editor", in particular, is, strangely, exactly how the now indef blocked User:UrbanNerd--who lived in Ottawa, where the anon's IP traces to--would frequently refer to me...)

First off, the anon has been trying to change the pre-existing composition but has been reverted each time. Per WP:BRD, he/she shoud have stopped reverting and come here some time ago. Secondly, other misleading edit summaries aside, the anon keeps trying to justify his/her shift of Harper's press conference to the start of the paragraph by saying it came before the Queen of Canada's (the last Queen of England died in 1707), as though he/she were fixing a broken chronological order. Except, the anon's edit didn't fix or even establish a chronological order; it presently (with the anon's edit reverted back in again) lists events that took place in the following order: 7 July, 8 July, 8 July, 6 July, 9 July, and 11 July. By the anon's argument, the message from the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, released on 6 July, should lead off the paragraph.

Prior to the anon's edit warring in his/her preferred (but nonsensical) order, it was arranged by precedence: Queen, Governor General, Lieutenant Governor, Prince Charles, Prime Minister, Premier. Now it's just a mess.--Ħ MIESIANIACAL 20:02, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I also reverted your edits, as well as many other editors. Are we too the urban nerd ? 138.34.6.2 (talk) 14:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, it turns out that, yes, you are! --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 19:29, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Your only contribution to this article appears to be a revert war to attempt to get Harper's name listed first for no good reason. You have also been removing warnings from your talk page. I see nothing constructive here. K7L (talk) 15:01, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Having 1 item out of order chronologically is not a mess but reordering it as per your suggestion would be. Precedence according to who? Others may think Harper is first because the Queen is considered by many to only be a figurative head of Canada. Date order makes more sense. While we are on the subject of WP:BRD you may want to read it again. You were reverted and continued to re-insert the edit rather than coming here. --Daffydavid (talk) 05:33, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Why should Harper be first? He has done absolutely nothing to provide aid to Lac-Mégantic so far, even though both interprovincial/international rail and unemployment insurance are matters of federal responsibility. If anything, he's demoted Mégantic's local MP (who used to be Industry minister) in the federal cabinet[13] and turned the Transport ministry over to a unilingual anglo minister[14] right in the middle of this mess. Workers whose workplace has been obliterated, meanwhile, are still waiting for their first unemployment cheques.[15] I'm seeing lots of photo-ops and hearing lots of vague platitudes and promises, but no substance... the province has mobilised $60 million in aid and the local mayor has proven herself "la dame du granit" while Harper smiles for the cameras and does nothing to help. Sir Paul McCartney has done more than that.[16] The municipality has asked that the tracks be rerouted out of downtown toward the industrial park, has asked for federal and provincial aid, has asked to prohibit dangerous goods shipments through the town's centre.[17] Harper needs to stop with the photo-ops, put on his shoes and get to work.

Save the list by precedence for international dignitaries who offer their condolences as a diplomatic formality. The information about Harper and Marois (as the people who should be leading federal and provincial relief efforts) should be in the section about the recovery efforts as they need to mobilise resources on a large scale, not just talk. We need to know what each has done about the derailment. K7L (talk) 12:44, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

K7L, please keep your political views out of the article. Whether he “has done nothing” is of little relevance. As the queen of England has “done nothing” as well. Harper can be mentioned in both the Response section as well as the Political impact and litigation section for different reasons. There is no one mention only rule here. 138.34.6.2 (talk) 14:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada. The British North America Act (1867) devolves responsibility for regulating the railway to Ottawa. The unanswered requests for federal assistance are coming from the local mayor, city council or others affected in-region and are being reported by reliable sources. To report the concerns raised, with proper sourcing and accurate attribution, is not original research but is relevant information. We wouldn't remove all information on the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina from that disaster's article, even though it might make Bush look bad. We include all of the facts. Mentioning the same photo-op or press conference twice is useless, but information on whom has jurisdiction and what is being done is necessary. K7L (talk) 14:57, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm from Maine so I have no horse in this race and as such may have something to offer. IMO, it is best to leave the section as is. If the queen's comments were put first I would have really had to chuckle since the date would actually put them in second place. I think most Americans think of her as a distant figurehead--though I suppose that plenty (or almost all?) of Canadians feel the same. Gandydancer (talk) 13:10, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree with the User:Gandydancer, User:Abductive, IP's and other users that the current order makes sense, and should be left as is. I also agree that any info regarding princes and their wives are irrelevant and should be removed. 138.34.6.2 (talk) 14:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Neither precedence nor chronology supports the current order, which is arbitrary and random. No idea why you want to remove valid, sourced info from the article. K7L (talk) 15:08, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Again, speaking as an "outsider", I think that Prince Charles seems reasonable. I removed some dates as they did not seem important and only made the copy tedious to read. Gandydancer (talk) 15:55, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Precedence according to the official order of precedence, Daffydavid. Though, I suppose we have a choice: the federal or provincial.

K7L is correct; the section is now neither ordered by precedence or chronology. Otherwise, it's random and and subject to rearrangements based on personal POVs. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 21:25, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Much ado about nothing if you ask me, but I like the solution Gandydancer has put in place. How exactly is 1 person out of chronological order a mess especially since that order fits with your preferred precedence? But just to muddy the waters, you will note that President Obama sent a letter to Harper, not the Queen. --Daffydavid (talk) 06:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

It's more than one out of order, all Gandydancer has done is remove some of the dates to hide the issue. It looks as if this has been repeatedly edited with the intention of pushing Harper up and Pauline Marois down, even though it took half a month for any specific federal aid to materialise. By chronology, the lieutenant governor was first; by precedence, the Queen is head of state. Listing Harper first is a partisan choice and nothing more. K7L (talk) 14:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Partisan? I see the Lt. Gov out of order but admittedly I didn't spend much time looking at it. As far as your accusation of editing to push Harper up and Marois down, this is just your POV as only Miesianiacal was using your preferred order, so edit warring by Miesianiacal would be the more accurate description. I doubt you will find much support in the broader Wikipedia community to support ordering condolence messages in order of $ provided. So far though I count you(K7L) and Miesianiacal pushing the head of state ideology while the overwhelming majority is against your version. And before you say it- yes Wikipedia goes by consensus not majority.--Daffydavid (talk) 20:23, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

It was certainly not my intent to hide anything. If one were to read any number of articles they would find that when responses come in the exact date is generally not used when they are within a few days of each other. Gandydancer (talk) 20:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Daffydavid, in what way does the section right now align with any order of precedence? Who Obama sent a letter to is entirely irrelevant.

As I said, unless an order--either chronological or by precedence (where's the Wikipedia community support for ordering condolence messages according to money provided? Many if not most condolence messages come with zero money)--is established, the accusations of POV that have already started are only going to keep flying around. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 20:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

"Who Obama sent a letter to is entirely irrelevant." Irrelevant? It would seem that Obama doesn't share your preferred order of precedence. As a world leader his opinion takes precedence over yours. --Daffydavid (talk) 02:20, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Why? Obama is not the queen of Canada. K7L (talk) 02:24, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Pleased to meet you Your Royal Highness K7L. But while we are it I see MIESIANIACAL has not been following the rules about NOT biting the newbies WP:DNB, if you are going to quote Wikipedia policies to IP editors like 3RR do read them first as the user was not guilty of this (or if you regard it as a slow-edit war then MIESIANIACAL should have been warned twice) and you K7L implying that the removal of this warning from his page is somehow wrong is indicative of further attempts to intimidate. Wikipedia is built on collaboration not intimidation and there has been way too much time wasted on this already. Can we stick to the topic at hand? Right now we have you two (K7L and MIESIANIACAL, which I'm beginning to think are 1 and the same) on 1 side with your preferred version and everyone else on the other. So I suggest you take it to the arbitration boards or give it up.--Daffydavid (talk) 02:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

That is so unproductive. Obviously who his letter was to is irrelevant to this discussion about how to arrange the paragraph that covers the responses by Canadian figures; he doesn't set Canada's or Quebec's order of precedence. I linked to both of the latter; I assume you didn't notice. Here they are again: the federal and provincial. As reliable sources, those take precedence in this matter in Wikipedia over your opinions of who's more important than whom and whether or not you think Obama agrees with you.

I think we need to focus on deciding whether to use the official order of precedence and which or use a chronological order. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 02:48, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

K7L reinserting an edit because it fits with your preferred version isn't helping anyone. What part of "leave it alone until consensus is reached" don't you understand? Are you going to persist in a slow edit war until the rest of us lose interest out of sheer frustration? Irregardless, is this the version you prefer or do you still want changes? I see some dates are still out of order so it satisfies neither the chronological not the precedence model. One final note about the precedence model - yes I read your links and I am unclear why we should be following those examples of " Ceremonial and Canadian Symbols Promotion". What does this have to do with writing from a global perspective? Wikipedia is read by the world thus the point I made about Obama and his letter. He wrote to Harper not the Queen thus providing a indication that in the western world Harper is considered the leader of Canada not the Queen. Do you dispute this? Rather than discussing the inconsistencies in the number of deaths in the Spanish River derailment we are stuck on the "me, me ,me" of who said what 1st. --Daffydavid (talk) 06:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

The edit appeared to be a correction to one of the dates. We had Marois first reaction as July 11. Calgary Herald's timeline had 4pm July 6 as her first attempt to survey the damage. Sticking July 11 back in there is therefore factually inaccurate and I have no idea why you did this. That has nothing to do with the seemingly random order of the article section, which adding that one WP:RS did nothing to fix. It also has no connection to the Spanish River derailment, whose only impact here is on the one claim in the lede to "worst Canadian rail disaster since St. Hilaire" and where newspaper archive reports of the era are vague guesstimates of the exact number dead. K7L (talk) 13:25, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I haven't made an edit to the article for six days. (Prior to that, the anon seemed to be the one who had extreme difficulty comprehending "leave it alone until consensus is reached", since it made the bold change to the existing and was reverted; per WP:BRD (which was brought to its attention) the anon should've come here then to start a discussion, not after reverting again and again and again with misleading and attacking edit summaries.) So, you can drop that red herring.

The official order of precedence provides something concrete to refer to as a guide on how to order the persons mentioned in the paragraph in question, as opposed to a willy-nilly arrangement based on random editors' opinions about who is more important than who (and the odd reasons on which those opinions are founded). In other words: the official precedence is set, verifiable, and rebuffs edits based on POV ("Harper's more important; he goes first!" "No, the Governor General is; he goes first!" "No, it's the Queen!" Etc., etc., etc.). Alternately, chronological order will do the same thing. Now, with that argument presented, what's the one that defends your position, other than "that's the way it is now!" (because that ain't the way it was before)? --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 17:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

So which is your preferred version, chronologically or precedence? It looks like most Wikipedia articles follow the date order. --Daffydavid (talk) 18:29, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't have one. I automatically lean towards precedence; but that's a personal thing. I'd be fine with chronology. Perhaps an RfC on the two could find which most people prefer. --Ħ MIESIANIACAL 18:51, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Spanish River derailment

The current lede has "the deadliest rail disaster in Canada since the St-Hilaire train disaster in 1864." [18] has the 1910 Spanish River derailment of a passenger train at a bridge as slightly worse, at 63 dead, while [19] has 43 dead and [20] has 44 dead. Our Spanish River derailment article claims 40 deaths, based on a "rootsweb" copy of a newspaper article written before the full amount of damage was known. Which is correct? K7L (talk) 20:10, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

According to [21] Spanish River had 63 deaths. As a government website this is most likely the official death count. --Daffydavid (talk) 05:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd dug up a few sources and added them as external links to the article on that disaster; a book written locally for the 100th anniversary of this wreck has 43 and the newspaper coverage of the era seems to have vague, speculative or contradictory counts. K7L (talk) 13:36, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

While I would agree the newspaper articles are estimates and the books probably written using them as sources are you saying the government figure is an estimate too? See link above. --Daffydavid (talk) 18:31, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Should we worry about the exact number of deaths in an extra-provincial event more than a hundred years ago, and is an article on the Lac-Megantic derailment the place for that information? Bhopal India springs to mind too. Should we focus on industrial disasters in addition to railway disasters? 66.185.212.81 (talk) 11:17, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we should worry if the "fourth deadliest in Canadian history" claims for this rail disaster's article may (or may not) be incorrect, depending on the number of fatalities from other Canadian train wrecks. That claim is in the lead in this article. K7L (talk) 13:52, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Survivors in the Musi-Café

I wonder if anybody can clarify this passage for me:

The Musi-Café owner says that some employees and patrons felt the tremors of the train and thought it was an earthquake. They went out and started running. Other patrons and employees told some survivors that the tremors were an earthquake and that it would be better to stay under a table. Of those that went out, not all survived. Some were not able to outrun a "tsunami of fire"

Who survived from the Musi-Café to report that people hid under tables? Did everyone who remained die? How much time elapsed between the derailment and the fire reaching the Musi-Café? Abductive (reasoning) 02:39, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

The Musi-Café is less than ten metres from the derailment site so very little time would have elapsed before its destruction. Only a small number who fled immediately escaped. Those who were on the terrace instead of in the building itself account for most of the Musi-Café survivors; any who hesitated in any way did not escape alive. The text you've quoted appears to be a translation of a French-language FM radio interview with a survivor, which is linked as the cited source. 2001:5C0:1000:A:0:0:0:1203 (talk) 17:13, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Original research in the 'Environmental impact' section.

It seems to me that several paragraphs in the section on environmental impact may contain original research. In particular, the latter part of the paragraph starting "Blanchet stated...", and the two following paragraphs seem to be based on contributors' own interpretation of primary sources which do not themselves refer to the derailment. Can I ask that contributors familiarise themselves with WP:OR, and ensure that the article contains only material complying with policy - as otherwise, such non-compliant material may have to be removed. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:35, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd be more concerned about the problem that the articles are going badly off-topic at this point. DOT-111 tank car should be just about the cars themselves, but now seems to be 13kb about the actual tank car and another 13kb about Lac-Mégantic and the evils of Bakken crude. A lengthy discussion of English common law or the Ludwig case (Alberta) in an article about the Lac-Mégantic derailment in Québec is just as off-topic, as Québec is a civil code jurisdiction. Even if you occasionally get the same result by happenstance in a Québec civil court, the path to get there is so different that civil precedent from another jurisdiction is useless. K7L (talk) 00:14, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Characterisation of one sentence as a "lengthy discussion" does a disservice to the writer and may even call into question the editorial neutrality of the contributor.

This article is about the Lac-Megantic, Quebec derailment, which occurred in a province of Canada. We have seen--and even noted in this article!--that the Surete du Quebec is investigating this derailment, in order to weigh whether to indict on criminal charges. The Criminal Code is a federal document. As such, it transcends any common law vs civil code jurisdictional discussion. Events in one province have and will continue to have a bearing on matters under discussion in another, whether wikipedia editors like it or not.

Contributions related to the DOT-111 tank car article should be relegated to the article itself, or the article talk pages associated with it.

66.185.212.81 (talk) 11:05, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The DOT-111 tank car article was created because of the Lac-Mégantic derailment and has become a WP:HATRACK for discussion of that one event and H₂S, to the point where half that page is now off-topic. The off-topic material is originating here.

Ludwig is not a criminal negligence investigation and has nothing to do with rail per se, so its relevance is zero. Ludwig wanted a civil injunction to correct an unsafe condition (so Alberta common law) but couldn't get one as he had no lawyer. K7L (talk) 15:04, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Removed Ludwig and symposium info - irrelevant and prior to the event so obviously not a reaction. Further clean-up needed. --Daffydavid (talk) 15:16, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

editorializing?

"logorrheic" seems editorial, as does the comment "It is almost incomprehensible that the Minister of Transport does not have in place," which is not taken from the linked referenced footnote. While perhaps true, should these sorts of comment be in a Wiki article? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 14:04, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

McCartney

There was a Paul McCartney concert in Quebec a few weeks after the derailment; McCartney gave free tickets to a thousand Lac-Meganticois. Opinions on whether that's worth mentioning in the article? DS (talk) 22:45, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't sure whether to mention it or let it be. K7L (talk) 22:48, 15 September 2013 (UTC) :)

TNT equivalent

I am curious if a TNT equivalent can be estimated on the disaster Joules. The videos of the disaster on youtube look like a huge bomb went off. --Mark v1.0 (talk) 19:04, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

If an estimated number (of Joules of energy released) can be established then it can be compared to transporting a nuclear bomb through the town. I think most towns would not want nuclear bombs traveling through every day.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 10:42, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

What you are asking for would be considered WP:OR and not allowed in the article.--Daffydavid (talk) 22:24, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

MMA vs MM&A

When doing the copyedit of this article, I noticed that the operator is sometimes referred to as "MMA" and sometimes as "MM&A" fairly randomly (sometimes in the same paragraph). I haven't changed any as I don't know which we should use, but unless there is some good reason not to the article really ought to be consistent. Thryduulf (talk) 17:17, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Reconstruction

The section on "reconstruction" seems to be a mess of items which were supposed to be built - road extensions to bridge the Chaudière River near the athletic centre, a new library, retail space near the sport centre and in Fatima. What of this ever got built? What's still under construction, and with what timeline? There seems to be plenty of WP:RS coverage of the destruction and little being updated lately as to rebuilding efforts or any future attempt to re-route the rails around the town. The article has too many "plan to build this by Christmas" claims which need current info to update, and there's nothing much on the municipal website. K7L (talk) 04:28, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

MMA single manning

The Toronto Star has an article about Transport Canada's refusal to telease MMAs safety documents re single manning into the public domain. Might be some material there to incorporate into the article. Mjroots (talk) 10:41, 4 April 2014 (UTC)