I thought I counted 38 cars in the aerial photo of the pile
Some cars were pulled back by Trackmobile pulled uphill? or did some make it around the curvr?
No sight of the buffer car or engines
What stayed on the mountain? Didn't anybody go up there?
Per the maps, the engines were on the far end, top of the hill
How-who uncoupled what?
I do imagine the eco-nazis will make the most of this, and the anti oil anti pipeline dmbs--ts
As will politicians and bureaucrats.
But either the hand brakes were kicked off, by a person, or the cars downhill of the set handbrakes were uncoupled by a person
So far that question has not been posed in the news DUUUUUUUHH
Oh and doesn't that mean the train had already passed thru town on its way up? Not that important, but perhaps someone could have demonstrated thinking capability by mentioning it
As explained on TO, the CROR and US rules require a sufficient number of hand brakes.
That used to be experience and guesswork, but the rules say that after you guess you must pull on the train to see if it moves, if it does, set more.
Seems like a person would overset so as to get it over with
The airbrakes stuff is all crap- either Burkhardt doesn't know his rules or he's misquoted. Nothing wrong with leaving an engine running to keep the main reservoir full so as to get a quicker start, but enough handbrakes are required to be set to hold the train without any air- the air can't release them etc etc and blah. So nothing happens if ALL the engines are shut down, but a possible longer pump-up time in the morning.

In the TO discuss, somebody stated an incident at Yates AB had been the prod to provide minimum set handbrake requirements for various grades, loads etc.
I found the TSB report, from 1996. The current CROR is 2008 and minima are probably in ETT or GOI for each RR. BTW CROR applies to all RRs in Canada
Now the news sez the engineer was all by hisself. But the man on TO described how he followed the rules without help when his conductor took ill and he got caught by HOS.

Are newspeople the dumbest of the dumb on this planet?