Join the discussion on the following article:
Hearing set in Lac-Mégantic case
W. Cook’s comment started an idea cooking.
That the case of information the investigator could have discovered, maybe not legally actionable, information about train securement from other employes, concerning handbrakes set by the accused, could start a profile indicating where additional educational/disciplinary emphasis should be placed.
Say that you employ an engineer that never worked trains down a grade steeper than .8 per cent to run on 1.8 per cent, 6 miles long, grades.
After years of running trains, 10, or more years, that engr. ain’t ready or qualified.
A educational, preferably experiential profile showing a level of sophistication necessary to work heavy or/and mountain grade territory…might it save lives?
BTW, OJT doesn’t cut it on mt. grades. BT,DT.
I think the continuing crews were American. Perhaps they could not be compelled to testify.
The investigator and per their report have failed to interview any of the other employees on the MM&A who had released the brakes on their re-crew of trains parked at Nantes. Mr. Harding has for over a year failed to apply the proper number of hand brakes on the cars in the trains. All those crews who only found one or two cars with hand brakes to release could have called the office and report the safety failure. I have heard of one crewman who did call the Rules Examiner but he failed to do anything to correct the problem of only one car having hand brakes applied.
There were always two people who knew how many hand brakes were applied on those trains, not just one person. The person who put them on, Mr. Harding, and the person who took those brakes off. If these other employees had done their job and reported the failures of Mr. Harding the deaths would not have happened.
Why has the investigation not interviewed all the other train crews for the past year and find out how many hand brakes they found to release, and charge them for failure to identify the safety hazard? There are more guilty employees, beside the Train Master who was never seen in Canada as his base was in USA. He did not do his job of checking how many brakes were being applied to the cars of the train. Locomotive hand brakes only apply to one set of wheels and are very poor for holding back a train on a grade. The rules were wrong permitting the engine hand brakes to be counted like a car as the hand brakes on a car apply the brake shoes on every wheel and are 4 or more times better than an engine hand brake. There was no automatic air brakes applied on the train when parked as MM&A rules required the brake pipe to be with released with no pressure, even though the cylinders on the cars were fully charged. That was another failure by a bad rule.
Sufficient hand brakes were to hold any parked train.
The big thing that stood out for me was the lack of safety and integrity to insure a job was done correctly by key personnel. From maintenance doing shoddy work to a dispatcher that didn’t think a locomotive smoking and spewing oil all over the place was an immediate problem to an engineer who didn’t know how to ensure enough hand brakes were set. It was a culture in the company that allowed this to happen. When I read how other crews did the same thing and how management didn’t seem to care it reminded me of things I had heard and observation that seem to fit this situation:
- “We have a good working relationship. He doesn’t want to learn and I don’t want to teach him.”
- “There are those who are responsible and those who are to blame; let me explain the difference. Those who are to blame go to jail; those who are responsible do not.”
- Watching my neighbor pour gas in his car while smoking. Gas fumes were rising towards his face so I stepped back and asked, “Aren’t you afraid the fumes will ignite?” He said, “It hasn’t been a problem so far.”
And so were the thoughts and practices at MMA…until Lac-Mégantic.
Is there no culpability on the part of the shipper? They knew that they were loading sweet crude, but labelled it at the less hazardous commodity in order get a lower freight rate. Was this just a mistake?
Bill Reynolds