At about 1h15 am last saturday morning, a Montréal,Maine and Atlantic train derailed in downtown of the town of Lac Megantic, Québec, Canada ( about 6000 residants). From the news coverage itis confirm the train had no one aboard and consisted of 4or 5 locomotives and about 70 tank cars of light crude oil. The train was stopped about an hour before at the village of Nantes, 17 km up hill from Lac megantic for a crew change.
there was a fire in a locomotive at Nantes and it was taken care by the fireman. For a reason unknown, the train started to go downhill to lac megantic with about 10 cars on manual brake . No confirmation that the air brake where on. According to witness,it came in very fast in the village with fire under the boggies of the first tank cars and jumped the track downtown 30 feets from a bar.
There was 3 explosions and a wall of fire that sweep on the center of the city ( you can see photos on Google if you type "Lac Megantic" and go to image).
the fire was so intense, it has burned about 40 buildings to the ground including the bar where there would have been about 20 to 40 peoples inside. The fire rage for about 2 days and the police and investigators can start now going to the area of destruction looking for bodies and clues to this very unfortunate event.
As of now, officals confirm 13 bodies found an about 40 to 50 peoples missing.
About 40 tank cars pilled up and some of the oil ended up in the Lake Megantic. Officals are working hard to containt the oil so it does'nt go in the ChaudiÈre river.
I want to take this moment to share my condoleance for the people who lost love ones.
A long investiguation is starting and the debate about safety of transportation of harzardious materiel is rising up.
I like trains very much from the z scale to the full scale... but I had to share this very sad news with all of you.
Lets hope very hard that good can come out of this so that trains stay safe.
Jacques
