All speculation of course, but imagine if the new crew had arrived say 15 minutes later. By then the train may have already started to move on its own and all they would have been able to do is watch. 3 lives would have been spared which is good. Possibly though the train would have gained a higher speed earlier (due to no dynamic braking) and mostly derailed in the upper spiral tunnel. This would likely have posed a much more difficult extraction and cleanup operation than CP now has, with the wrecked cars out in the open and right beside the Trans Canada highway. Just theorizing.
Lac Megantic was a chain of several contributing events as I recall. The previous crew had left the train running and a faulty turbo caught fire. Someone called 911 and the fire department arrived, shut off the engine, put out the fire and left. Without the engine running the air pressure slowly bled off and the train started moving downgrade.
Rod
