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Village evacuated after Quebec train derailment

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The explanation that shutting down the running engine caused the brakes to release appears to by chiseled into a granite monument as a fundamental truth of life.  It must be part of over 1000 newspaper articles by now.  Everybody is reciting it with faith and conviction.  Everybody, that is, except Burkhardt who originally introduced the explanation, but has now abandoned it in favor of throwing the engineer under the bus.     The following two quote sets are Burkhardt first explaining the loss of air brakes due to the engine shutdown before he started blaming the engineer for not setting hand brakes.  The second quote is from an expert refuting what Burkhardt said.    QUOTE #1                         Ed Burkhardt, chair of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railways, has said the engineer followed proper procedures, setting the main air brake system and several hand brakes before he left. A locomotive unit was left running to maintain the brake system, said Burkhardt. “Everything was as it should have been,” he said. Burkhardt said the fire department turned off the engine to fight the blaze, which caused the brakes to fail about an hour later. The train began its death hurtle then downhill into town. Thirteen people are confirmed dead and as many as 50 still missing. “It’s shutting the engine off that did this,” said Burkhardt.     QUOTE #2 Experts are baffled as to how that could have happened. Wally Kirkpatrick, manager of rules and operations with RTC Rail Solutions, said safety rules dictate a train being left anywhere should be put in a “full service” brake. That means decreasing the pressure in the air brake system, which applies the brakes. “The only way these brakes are going to release is if the pressure goes up,” said Kirkpatrick, who has 38 years of experience. “This is the fail-safe thing about a train.” “How the train got away in this situation is really beyond me.”
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