Runaway Freight Train Carrying Bakken Crude Destroys Center of Canadian Town

Updates

July 9, 2013: the locomotive of this train was on first some hours earlier, Rigzone is reporting. Okay.

July 9, 2013: the train may have been tampered with. CNN is reporting:

The chairman of the company whose driverless train barreled into the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic and unleashed a deadly inferno told a Montreal newspaper he believes it had been tampered with.

"We have evidence of this," Ed Burkhardt said in an interview published by the Montreal Gazette. "But this is an item that needs further investigation. We need to talk to some people we believe to have knowledge of this."

July 9, 2013: From Platts:

Analysts also pointed to the dearth of hard facts about the incident, including the question of how a cargo of crude, which is not particularly flammable, was ignited.

I've wondered the same; great question. Weren't just four (4) tank cars of the 73 tank cars involved? I can't remember; seems I read something along that line.
  

Original Post

The 73-crude-oil-tank train had come to a stop; the engineer had parked the train some distance from town, when he got out, waiting for "his relief," somehow the train "escaped." The story follows.

Reuters is reporting:

A driverless freight train carrying tankers of crude oil derailed at high speed and exploded into a giant fireball in the middle of a small Canadian town early on Saturday, destroying dozens of buildings and leaving an unknown number of people feared missing.

The disaster occurred shortly after 1 a.m. (0500 GMT) when the runaway train with 73 cars sped into Lac-Megantic, a picturesque lakeside town of about 6,000 people near the border with Maine, and came off the rails. Witnesses said the town center was crowded at the time.

Four of the cars caught fire and blew up in a fireball that mushroomed many hundreds of feet up into the air.

Montreal, Maine & Atlantic's vice president of marketing, Joseph R. McGonigle, said the train was transporting crude oil from North Dakota to Canada, likely to New Brunswick, news that is bound to revive questions about the safest way to carry the oil needed to service North America's economies.

Runaway, The Traveling Wilburgs/Del Shannon