We recently received a comment from Mr. Pieter Sijpkes, which included a link to a recent editorial that he had written, and was subsequently published, by the Montreal Gazette on August 22, 2013, “Letter: Freight trains in Point-St-Charles and St-Henri.”
Sijpkes describes himself as being recently retired from teaching at the McGill School of Architecture, and lives in the Point St Charles area. He states that “The very negative influence of shunting yards on human habitation was studied by my students and I in several projects over the years.” Read more…
“Rail relocation to outskirts of cities a win-win,” says a recently published article by Mary-Jane Bennett, a transportation consultant.
Indeed, the Lac Megantic disaster has touched off a fury of discussion about railway safety in populated areas. One viewpoint favours the outright relocation of rail lines away from urban areas; those opposed point to primarily economic considerations and question the feasibility of such an undertaking.
Bennett says that “while both sides are correct, the arguments for one do not negate the benefits for the other.”
Therein is the challenge. Read more…
$7 million dollars…that’s how much money the city of Lac-Megantic says it is currently owed by the railway that obliterated much of its downtown core last month, killing 47 people.
Railway Files for Bankruptcy Protection
With the projected cost of the cleanup reaching well into the tens of millions of dollars, and compensation for hundreds of individuals and business affected pushing the projected tally much higher, the railway turned to the courts to file for creditor protection last Thursday in Canada and in the U.S. Read more…
This Montreal Maine and Atlantic train is situated at the location where the train involved in the July 6th tragedy was left idling
Five locomotives, 72 rail cars laden with crude oil, and a lone employee in charge of the entire train. Frankly, I’ve seen kid’s outdoor lemonade stands staffed by more people.
The rest, unfortunately, is history. A fire breaks out in one of the locomotives, and the local fire department responds and extinguishes it. The rail employee retires at a nearby hotel after a 12 hour shift.
The abandoned Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic train is left idling on an incline, breaks free, and gathers speed as it rolls downhill into the town of Lac-Megantic, where it derails, explodes, and vaporizes part of the downtown core. Read more…
With the cold Canadian winter hurdling down much of the country at this point, we’re providing those of you trying to cope with the issue of idling locomotives another YouTube video in order to warm you up and wonder why it’s not doing the same for more locomotives:
Rail and Reason 