TSB Laboratory Report LP132/2013

1.0 Introduction

1.1 Description of occurrence

1.1.1

On 6 July 2013, at approximately 0115 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) a freight train operated by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), designation MMA-02, derailed in the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. Tank cars loaded with crude oil caught fire destroying many buildings and causing 47 fatalities.

1.2 Engineering services requested

1.2.1

Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) rail investigators responded to the occurrence. They recovered an end-of-train sense and brake unit (SBU, also referred to as an end-of-train telemetry system), which was delivered to the TSB Engineering Laboratory along with a request to extract all relevant data from its non-volatile memory (NVM).

1.3 Parts received

2.0 Examination and data extraction

2.1

An external examination of the Wabtec Railway Electronics SBU (Figure 1) revealed only damage that was consistent with normal operation in the rail environment. An internal examination did not reveal any damage to the electrical and electronic components housed in the SBU.

Image

Click image to enlarge.

2.2

Through consultation with Wabtec Railway Electronics, it was determined that this SBU had non-volatile memory (NVM) that retained data considered relevant to the investigation of this occurrence (Appendix A). Wabtec supplied the TSB Engineering Laboratory with the hardware, ^{Footnote 1} procedures and information required to download and interpret ^{Footnote 2} the data retained by the SBU’s NVM.

2.3

The hardware and procedures provided by Wabtec were used to successfully download the data from the SBU’s NVM. The data consisted of 7213 records, each consisting of 27 data fields (Appendix B).

2.4

The data were transferred to an Excel spreadsheet and, along with the Wabtec interpretation information, were provided to the TSB Engineering Laboratory Recorders group for analysis under LP136/2013 “LER Data Retrieval and Analysis”.

3.0 Conclusion

3.1

The data retained by the Wabtec Railway Electronics SBU were successfully extracted.

Appendices

Appendix A: Data stored in Wabtec Railway Electronics SBU

Note: Additional information describing data field (column) options can be found in the Wabtec document "EOT Data Flash Log Download and Analysis". Also no GPS module was installed in the SBU; therefore, data in columns 22 through to 26 are not valid.

Appendix B: SBU sample data

Note: Only the first and last 30 records are shown.

This lab report is part of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada's investigation report R13D0054.