Great Western Coffee Shop

All this talk of runaway trains seemed to me like something from the long past (Armagh 1915 1889 came to mind) and I though continuous fail safe automatic brakes were the result.  I have three questions:

1) Are continuous automatic fail-safe brakes a requirement on all trains in the UK?

Yes now air brakes (are there any charters still vacuum?) for passenger and freight previously up to 60/70s mostly vacuum for passenger and unfitted for freight. Although some pre grouping companies used Westinghouse air brakes for passenger. eg LBSC

2) Is this the case elsewhere?

Pretty well universal although it is reported Wikipedia in some poorer countries Myanmar (Burma) for instance freight trains run unfitted due to lack of vacuum hoses to couple wagons.

3) Do these still apply when the train is parked and the engine turned off?

No, that's why all wagons have hand brakes, without the engine providing high pressure air the brakes will will gradually leak off. Hence the runaway happenning some time after the train is parked if sufficient hand brakes have not been operated.

I've obviously been labouring under a misconception then - I though that whether brakes are worked by positive or negative pressure (i.e. air or vacuum) they fail 'on'. Is that really not the case?

In case of the accident above it seems that the train was left unattended, complete reliance being placed on the engine providing air for the brakes.

Summary

On 06 July 2013, shortly before 0100 Eastern Daylight Time, eastward Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway freight train MMA-002, which was parked unattended for the night at Nantes, Quebec, started to roll. The train travelled approximately 7.2 miles, reaching a speed of 65 mph. At around 0115, when MMA-002 approached the centre of the town of Lac-M^gantic, Quebec, 63 tank cars carrying petroleum crude oil (UN 1267) and 2 box cars derailed. About 6 million litres of petroleum crude oil spilled. There were fires and explosions, which destroyed 40 buildings, 53 vehicles, and the railway tracks at the west end of Megantic Yard. Forty-seven people were fatally injured. There was environmental contamination of the downtown area and of the adjacent river and lake.

If the train becomes divided or the brake pipe is broken for any other reason, the brakes will without fail be applied.
The force to apply the brakes is from the compressed air stored in the reservoir of each vehicle.
In time this will leak away and the brakes gradually release, hence the need for parking brakes, handbrakes, or wheel scotches.

If a train is left unattended with the brakes applied and the engine running to supply air, then the brake should work indefinatly.
If however the engine stops, whether by mechanical failure, human intervention, or for want of fuel, then in time the brakes will gradually "leak off" and if the train is on a gradient it will run away.

Oh, I had assumed it was that the brakes were on at normal air pressure, and the engine had to reduce or increase the air presure in order to take the brakes off. Thus a leak would cause the brakes to come on and there would be no risk of them leaking off. There must be a good reason why this is not the case, but I can't think what that is.

I seem to recall that the old vacuum brakes were applied by a big spring and the vacuum was required to release them. I assumed this was the case with air brakes too. It appears not.  Someone will be able to tell us how it works in the UK.

Rail cars on fire after crude train derails in Ontario, Canadian National Railway says

(Reuters) - Seven rail cars were on fire in northern Ontario after a train carrying crude oil derailed late on Saturday night, Canadian National Railway said on Sunday.

The train, heading from Alberta to eastern Canada, derailed shortly before midnight about 80 km (50 miles) south of Timmins, Ontario, a CN spokesman said. Canada's largest rail operator said 29 of 100 cars were involved and seven were on fire.

"The derailment occurred in a remote wooded area and there are no reports of injuries. There is a fire at the scene," Patrick Waldron said in an email.

Investigators from the Transportation Safety Board have been sent to the site, the agency said on Sunday.

CN, which has dispatched firefighting and environmental crews and equipment to the scene, said the train had been visually inspected four times, most recently on Saturday, and had passed over a wayside safety detector about 20 miles before the derailment with no issues identified.

A boom in oil shipments by rail and a spate of derailments across North America have put heightened focus on rail safety. In 2013, 47 people were killed in the Quebec town of Lac-M^gantic after a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded.

West Virginia Train Derailment: Fireball Erupts Into Sky As Derailment Sends Tanker Into River
Feb 16, 2015, 6:47 PM ET
Anastasia Williams and Elara Mosquera
(http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/AP_train_derailment_scene_jef_150216_16x9_992.jpg)
A fire burns, Feb. 16, 2015, after a train derailment near Charleston, W.Va

A train carrying more than 100 tankers of crude oil derailed in West Virginia on Monday - sending a massive fireball hundreds of feet into the sky, igniting a home and causing hundreds in the area to evacuate.

The CSX train had 109 cars - 25 of which derailed around 1:17 p.m., and about half of those cars caught fire or are leaking oil. Several of the cars spilled into the Kanawha River, officials said.

A Canadian jury has found three former rail workers not guilty of criminal negligence for their connection to the Lac-Megantic disaster five years ago.

On 6 July 2013, a runaway train filled with petroleum crude oil derailed in the small eastern Quebec town.

Forty-seven people were killed in the tragedy and much of Lac-Megantic's downtown core was destroyed.

The trial began 2 October in a Quebec Superior Court in Sherbrooke, about 100km (62 miles) west of Lac-Megantic.

Locomotive engineer Tom Harding, traffic controller Richard Labrie and manager of train operations Jean Demaitre were charged in 2014 with criminal negligence causing the death of 47 people.

Under Canada's criminal code, the charge carries a potential life sentence.

All three pleaded not guilty.

The twelve men and women on the jury began deliberating on 11 January.

On Tuesday, Quebec Superior Court Justice Gaetan Dumas sent them back into deliberations after they told him they were at an impasse.

Up in flames
The tragedy began when a fire broke out in the main locomotive after Mr Harding had parked the train in the village of Nantes and left for the night to sleep.

Firefighters extinguished the flames and turned off the engine, which cut the air breaks. An hour later, the train rolled into downtown Lac-Megantic and derailed, exploding in a huge blaze.

Mr Harding admitted that he only applied seven handbrakes and did not fully test them before leaving the train.

The prosecution argued more handbreaks would have stopped the train from moving.

After he learned of the explosion, Mr Harding helped emergency responders detach the remaining fuel cars from the train.

Long deliberations
When the verdict was finally read, CBC reported that the those in the courtroom let out a loud gasp.

The jurors listened to hours of technical testimony from train specialists, heard audio recordings from the incident and listened to former rail employees testify that the company had no budget for training and placed little importance on safety, according to CBC.

The jury deliberated for eight days, at one point asking the judge for clarification on the concept of "marked difference", which the behaviour of the accused would have to be noticeably different from a colleague in a similar circumstance.

Mr Harding and the other accused waived their right to mount a defence. Instead, their lawyers argued that the prosecutors' case did not meet the burden of proof.

Lawyers for the accused argued that many factors out of their control contributed to the disaster, including a culture at Montreal, Maine and Atlantic railway (MMA) of relaxed standards and insufficient training.

MMA also failed to heed a Transportation Safety Board's report that said the rail line running from Nantes to Lac-Megantic was the second steepest of any stretch of track in Canada.

The Canadian Transportation Agency suspended MMA's license after the accident.