Iron Horse Roundup For July/August 2013

AFP Photo

MONTREAL, MAINE & ATLANTIC- In the wake of last month's deadly runaway train wreck that devastated the southern Quebec town of Lac Megantic, Hermon, ME-based Montreal, Maine & Atlantic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in federal bankruptcy court in Bangor, ME.

The MM&A has also petitioned Canadian civil courts for relief under that country's Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act. The company appears to have set aside nearly $786,000 as “indemnification and/or contribution in connection with wrongful death litigation and other claims,” according to a listing of the company’s 20 largest creditors.

MMA still owes $27.5 million of a $35 million loan it received from the Federal Rail Administration in 2005, according to Gardner’s affidavit. The railroad also has a $6 million line of credit with the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway Co. issued in June 2009. That company has sought to protect its security interest, the affidavit said.

Other creditors include JD Irving subsidiary New Brunswick Southern, a subsidiary of San Antonio, TX-based Valero energy [NYSE- VLO], Minneapolis, MN-based Flex Leasing LLC and the Canadian Pacific railroad [NYSE- CP; TSX- CP].

Although a federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the MM&A could continue to operate under Chapter 11 reorganization, the line through Lac Megantic is still closed, effectively severing the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic in two. At the end of July, Maine state officials had entered into talks with four other unnamed railways to continue service in anticipation of the MM&A shutting down.

The MM&A laid off 79 workers in the wake of the Lac Megantic disaster. Meanwhile, Canadian officials have raised the death toll in Lac Megantic to 47 during the July 6th derailment.

Xoan Soler- La Voz de Galicia

SPAIN- The driver of a train that derailed and killed 78 passengers in northwestern Spain has been provisionally charged with multiple counts of negligent homicide, although he wasn't required to post bond or sent to jail because he wasn't considered a flight risk.

Garzon was questioned for almost two hours at the court in Santiago de Compostela, the northwestern town near where the accident occurred.

Garzon was driving the train carrying 218 passenger in eight cars that hurtled far over the 80-kph (50-mph) speed limit into a high-risk curve on Wednesday evening, tumbling off the tracks and slamming into a concrete wall, with some of the cars catching fire.

The Spanish rail agency has said the brakes should have been applied four kilometers (2.5 miles) before the train hit the curve

However, a local resident who rushed to the scene of the accident said in an interview broadcast Sunday that minutes after the crash Garzon had told him he had been going fast and couldn’t brake.

The resident, Evaristo Iglesias, said he and another person accompanied the blood-soaked Garzon to flat ground where other injured people were being laid out, waiting for emergency services to arrive.

“He told us that he wanted to die,” Iglesias told Antena 3 television. “He said he had needed to brake but couldn’t,” Iglesias said. He added that Garzon said “he had been going fast.”

In its report about the accident, Antena 3 television showed a photograph of Iglesias in a pink shirt and cap helping to carry the driver after the train accident. The station also aired television footage of Iglesias working beside the wrecked train to help other survivors.

Garzon was reportedly on the phone with an agent at the next station to determine which track his train was to come in on. While in the USA, train crews are now prohibited from talking on the phone while operating the train, Spain's state-run RENFE uses what's referred to as 'tren-tierra' or train to land lines to communicate between stations and crew. Shortly before the accident, the train passed from an area where computers control most of the train's functions to one where the driver has to brake and accelerate accordingly. It's believed that Garzon may have missed this transition point while he was on the phone.

ARGENTINA- Transportation officials in Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires have released in-cab CCTV footage of engineers reading, napping or playing on their phones while the train is in motion.

In one clip, the driver is seen stepping up to the camera in his train cabin, attempting to obscure the lens so his activities cannot be seen. Other drivers are more overtly distracted, with some taking a nap, reading a book or playing on their mobile phone.

Argentina's Interior and Transport Minister Florencio Randazzo has since vowed to lead a crackdown on dangerous train drivers.

He plans to ban phone calls and unauthorised people in the cab

Mr Randazzo has introduced daily medical checks on all drivers to gauge their fitness to drive and to reduce the risk of them falling asleep at the controls.

Under the new system, all those caught distracted on camera will either be disciplined or fired.

The release of the footage comes more than a year after a commuter train plowed into a terminal in Buenos Aires, killing 49 and injuring hundreds.

FRANCE- Investigators in France believe a faulty switch system was to blame in a deadly derailment that killed six passengers at a station south of Paris last month.

After leaving the tracks, the train crashed into the station at Bretigny-sur-Orge.

A passenger speaking on France's BFM television said the train was going at a normal speed and was not meant to stop at Bretigny-sur-Orge.

He described children unattended in the chaotic aftermath, and swarms of emergency workers at the scene.

Two train cars, numbers 3 and 4, initially derailed, then knocked the other cars off the track, SNCF chief Guillaume Pepy said.

"Some cars simply derailed, others are leaning, others fell over," he said

A spokesman for the French state-run railway- SNCF- said the train was carrying an estimated 350 passengers when it derailed at 5:15 PM local time at Gare Bretigny sur Orge. The official death toll from the accident was 7 with more than 20 injured.


CALIFORNIA- Governor Jerry Brown has ordered a 60-day 'cooling down' period between San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit and workers threatening to strike over an expired contract with the transit agency.

Last month, a 4-day strike had left Bay Area commuters scrambling for alternate transportation. It was the first strike for BART since 1997.

Prior to Brown's announcement, both the Service Employees International Union and Amalgamated Transit Union were hoping the looming deadline of Sunday, Aug 11th would be sufficient to pressure BART management to agree to a renewed contract on the union's terms. Prior to Brown's intervention, the unions had threatened to resume their strike after this weekend.

The two month delay would take away some leverage from unions representing BART employees as it would allow the agency time to recruit replacement workers from out of retirement. An odd clause in the contract originally signed in 1979 would have prevented BART from hiring replacement drivers until the workers actually went on strike, and even then the replacement workers would only after completing a 15 week training course.

Reuters/Denis Balibouse

SWITZERLAND- Transportation officials in Switzerland are investigating the cause of a head-on collision between two passenger trains in the western part of the country. The crash killed the driver of one of the trains and injured at least 35 passengers.

The two Swiss Federal Railways regional passenger trains collided with one another head-on at Granges-Marnand in the Vaud Canton outside of Lucerne on July 29th. Although some press outlets have speculated that one of the trains left the Granges-Marnand station too early and collided with an incoming train, officials have yet to determine the exact cause of the crash and are moving both wrecked train sets to another location to closer examine the wreckage.

SOO Line SD60 #6053 leads an SD60M over county highway G38 outside of Washington, IA with a northbound Kansas City-St Paul manifest freight train on June 2012. Eric Rasmussen photo.

CANADIAN PACIFIC- In a surprise move, the Canadian Pacific Railroad announced that they are seeking bids for more than 40 former Soo Line SD60s and SD60Ms. The solicitation comes as the CPR is more than halfway through an extensive rebuild of their SD60 fleet. Some of the units are being stored at CP's St Luc yard in Montreal. All of the overhauled units have been rebuilt to Tier 0+ EPA compliance and feature AESS Locomotive Automatic Engine Start/Stop and Positive Traction Control in compliance with an upcoming PTC mandate expected to take effect starting in 2015- several more are supposed to undergo rebuilding at Montreal's CADRAIL facility.

The Soo Line ordered the SD60s from EMD in 1987 and with CP Rail's takeover, the burly 3800 HP six axle EMDs could be found anywhere from the Canadian Rockies to upstate New York although they were (and still are) outnumbered by CP Rail's far more prolific fleet of SD40-2s.

Canadian Pacific has also started putting up their fleet of former Milwaukee Road GP40s for sale- Respondek Rail Corp and United States Sugar Corp have already purchased a pair.

With the arrival of rebuilt GP20C-ECO and SD32C-ECO from Caterpillar [NYSE- CAT] subsidiary Progress Rail, Canadian Pacific returned their only two Gensets to National Railway Equipment in Illinois in July. The two Gensets- #2100 and #2101- were largely paid for by a province of Ontario 'green energy' intiative.

300 Arrested After Occupy Oakland Storms City Hall, Burns American Flag

But don't you DARE question their Patriotism!

Remember the early days of the burgeoning 'Occupy' movement, when former Marine Scott Olsen was injured in a skirmish between Occupy Oakland and the police? The whole occupy movement and their media enablers initially seemed eager to portray 'Occupy' as some sort of wholesome, spontaneous, series of protests as wholesome and American-as-apple-pie, complete with an injured veteran [even though the aforementioned vet founded a blog called "I Hate The Marine Corps"- NANESB!]

After garnering support from Democrat politicians such as Representatives Nancy Pelosi [D CA-5] or Jan Schakowski [D IL-9], 'Occupy' has since decided to drop the American-as-apple pie façade and determined that the only way to stay relevant is to escalate confrontations with authorities where "Occupy" encampments remain.

And of course, Oakland, CA is one such city. Earlier this month, Occupy Oakland marched on the Oakland PD headquarters in a rally given the quaint monicker of 'F*ck the Police'. Occupiers threw bottles, rocks and bricks at officers clad in riot gear while police responded by firing beanbag rounds and arresting six Occupiers.



Over the weekend, Occupy Oakland demonstrators broke into Oakland's City Hall and burned flags, destroyed an electrical box and damaged a children's art exhibit on display. Police used tear gas and smoke grenades to try and disperse the crowds and ended up arresting more than 400 Occupiers. Earlier in the weekend, marchers from Occupy Oakland tore down fencing around the dormant Henry J Kaiser convention center and attempted to force their way in.

Occupy Oakland was likely emboldened by a ruling against the Oakland PD in federal court last week in which U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson threatened to order a Federal takeover of the Department.

The judge appointed a monitor in 2003 to ensure the city complied with terms of a $10.5 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by victims of a notorious group of police officers known as "The Riders."

The group was accused of beating and framing suspects in the West Oakland area for years. One officer was acquitted at trial and criminal charges against two former officers were dismissed after two trials ended in hung juries. A fourth former officer remains a fugitive who disappeared after charged were filed in 2000.

The current monitor, Robert Warshaw, was appointed in 2010 and oversees the settlement with a staff of seven people.

The settlement included 51 specific reforms the department agreed to make within five years. Henderson noted Tuesday that he's extended the compliance deadline by years to little effect.

Perhaps unsurprisngly, the court-appointed monitor was also critical of how the Oakland PD had handled the initial confrontation with Occupy Oakland back in October, as well as individual officers blacking out their name tags or badge numbers while assaigned to babysit Occupiers.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan- apparently determined to show that she was still willing to handle the Occupy movement with kid gloves after what they put the city through- planned to contact the national leadership of the Occupy Wall Street movement to try and get them to persuade Occupy Oakland to shun violence.

NYPD Begins Clearing Zucotti Park of #OccupyWallStreet Encampment; #OccupyDC Protester Opens Fire on White House? Neo-nazi Liason in Oakland?

Mary Altaffer / AP

At least 70 protesters from the 'Occupy Wall Street protests were arrested by NYPD officers in the early morning hours of Tuesday as they moved to clear the park of squatters.

At around 1 AM, officers began circulating bulletins from Brookfield Property Management- owners of Zucotti Park- asking that those camped out on the property begin gathering up their personal items and leave.

Mayor Bloomberg, NYPD Commissioner Kelly and Brookfield property management [NYSE: BPO] decided that after weeks of unsanitary conditions, assaults, noise complaints and rapes that the park should be cleared of the demonstrators. As soon as the police removed the last of the holdouts (some of whom had chained themselves to trees) New York City sanitation workers began moving through the park cleaning up tents, garbage and other belongings left behind.

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators vowed to return and shut down lower Manhattan with acts of civil disobedience on the 2-month anniversary of the '#Occupy' movement. One Zucotti park occupier was arrested after his videotaped rant promising arson attacks against Macy's and other New York businesses went viral.

Although a court ruling issued later on Tuesday would allow the Occupy Wall Street protesters to return to Zucotti park, the ruling stipulated that would not be allowed to bring sleeping bags or tents back into the park.

Over the weekend, police in Portland, OR acting on orders from mayor Sam Adams, dismantled two campsites for #OccupyPortland in Chapman and Lownsdale Squares, resulting in one officer injured by a projectile and one protester arrested. By ( AM on Sunday Morning, both parks had been cleared of the occupiers and tents.

In Dallas, local TV stations are reporting that The City Hall Park encampment which #OccupyDallas set up was cleared of demonstrators with little incident, as many of the 'occupiers' had left in advance of the Dallas police moving in.

Over in the nation's Capital, an Idaho man suspected of firing at the White House reportedly spent time with #OccupyDC protesters. After the White House was peppered with rounds from an AK-style rifle (President Obama was en route to Hawaii for an economic summit), the rifle was found in an abandoned car shortly afterwards.

Pennsylvania state Police arrested the suspected gunman, 21 year old Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez of Idaho, at a hotel a few hundred miles away in Indiana, PA. Ortega-Hernandez reportedly had prior convictions for domestic abuse, drug possession and assault.

Meanwhile in Oakland, CA- which had seen some of the fiercest clashes between demonstrators and police, it appears that aides to Mayor Jean Quan were using a neo-nazi as an intermediary to communicate with #OccupyOakland. Two of Mayor Quan's top aides have resigned since clashes between #OccupyOakland protesters and Oakland police.

Hat tip- [Ace of Spades; Verum Serum]

73 Years Ago Tonight- Kristallnacht And Some Eerie Similarities to the #Occupy Movement

The overnight hours of November 9-10 1938 were marked by coordinated attacks against Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues throughout Germany and Austria in what was to be known as Kristallnacht- or 'Night of the Broken Glass'. The 1938 pogrom considerably ratcheted up persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria (which had been annexed earlier in 1938) by the ruling nazi party.

"It marked a dramatic escalation of the persecution of Jews in Germany," said retired professor Gerhard Weinberg.

The personal accounts gave a firsthand look at that night.

"They ripped up the belongings, the books, knocked over furniture, shouted obscenities," Harris said.

"Houses of worship burned down, vandalized, in every community in the country where people either participate or watch," Gerhard said.

They served a reminder of what happened and what was to come.

"People were coming in and destroying their family heirlooms, that kind of shock just shook their entire world and then the catastrophe of holocaust and its aftermath," said Thomas Louchheim, the co-chair of the Yom Ha Shoah Memorial Service.

And they served as a warning of what can happen in the future.

"Horrible things can happen when people don't care, or are silent," Harris said.

When Hitler assumed power in 1934, Jewish-owned shops were frequently attacked and vandalized by the paramilitary arm of the nazi party while they called for boycotts of Jewish run businesses. The following year, the Nuremberg laws were passed, which virtually eliminated the right of Jews in Germany to work, travel or vote.

Kristalnacht itself was reportedly sparked by the November 1938 shooting of a German diplomat in Paris by a Polish Jew who had been expelled from his Hannover home [although after the war it was apparent that the nazi regime was searching for any pretext to begin a widespread expulsion, imprisonment or extermination of Germany's Jewish population while destroying or seizing their property in the process- NANESB!]. Encouraged by the nazi SA stormtroopers, German civilians also took part in the lootings, assault and arson that fateful autumn night.

Now I guess this is the part where I heave a sigh of relief and say to myself 'I for one am glad that I don't live in a country that has roaming gangs of thugs indiscriminately attacking & intimidating people, vandalizing businesses and torching structures with tacit government approval'.

But hold the phones- what's this?

Keep in mind that that above image is not Bonn circa 1938, but rather Oakland, CA circa November 2011. The happy little hooded window-smashers depicted above are anarchists who have embedded themselves with the #OccupyOakland movement (although numerous #Occupy supporters insist that they're actually provocateurs sent by Homeland Security or the Oakland Police- y'know, because nothing is EVER their own fault). And while invoking Godwin's Law is the oldest trick on the internet, the whole #Occupy movement doesn't seem to be the least bit disturbed by their movement calling for a totalitarian ideology while their members blame a historic scapegoat for this nation's problems:

After skirmishes with police last week in which an ex-Marine was injured, #OccupyOakland called for a general strike and shut down the port while marchers and anarchists began smashing windows in storefronts, grocery stores and banks- even businesses that had expressed support for the #Occupy protests.

Meanwhile, in the nation's capital, Washington D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier said that the #OccupyDC protests were becoming increasingly aggressive and confrontational after demonstrators surrounded the Washington D.C. convention center during an Americans for Prosperity summit and started blocking public roads.

The apparent target of #OccupyDC's actions at the Convention Center (including using children as human shields) was the politically active billionaire Koch Brothers. That right there should be a dead giveaway that the entire #Occupy movement is nothing more than contrived leftist astroturf seeing as how they're remarkably quiet about President Obama's cozy relationship with wealthy bundlers like John Corzine or George Kaiser.

And lest you think I'm being too hyperbolic with the #Occupy/nazi comparison, the #Occupy movement has been endorsed by the American nazi party, complete with AR-15 toting neo-nazis showing up at #OccupyPhoenix.

For those of you who think the comparison to the nazi SA storm troopers is over-the-top and uncalled for, I give you the teachings of the Reverend Jim Jones and the People's Temple:

So tell me, how out of place would such a sermon be at one of the #Occupy demonstrations and sit-ins?

What Dangerous Armed Black Paramilitary Groups?

Apparently the latest meme that had been circulating around the leftosphere over the last few weeks is that Armed Black Separatist or Paramilitary Groups are actually a fabrication of FOX News- and even if they aren't, then they're perfectly harmless blowhards in berets or bow ties who should be ignored. Heck, even Erick Holder's Department of Justice allowed them to engage in some videotaped voter intimidation with no real consequence.

With that said, this week marks the 3-year anniversary of the murder of Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey. Bailey was shot dead in broad daylight in downtown Oakland shortly before an investigative piece of his about the pending bankruptcy of Your Black Muslim Bakery for the Oakland Post was scheduled to be published. Bailey's killer approached the editor and fired three rounds from a stolen Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun before fleeing in a waiting Ford Aerostar van.

The Your Black Muslim Bakery was supposedly a grassroots enterprise that provided food, jobs and vocational training to inner-city youth and was run by a Nation of Islam offshoot. In practise, it combined the worst attributes of a cult and a street gang. Bailey's article was to highlight problems within the Your Black Muslim Bakery that were much more sinister than bankruptcy- since 2002, the local institution's management had been in flux when then-Bakery head Yusuf Bey was taken into custody for 27 counts of rape and sexual assault against minors. Bey died of cancer at the age of 67 while awaiting trial in 2003.

Bey's successor at the bakery didn't last long. Waajid Aljawwaad went missing in late February 2004 and his decomposing body was discovered in a shallow grave near King Estates Park in Oakland in July of that year. I'm guessing by his relatively short tenure and the Bakery's other ventures (extortion, assault, kidnapping, rape, real-estate fraud, homicide), Waajid Aljawwaad might've been the only person at Your Black Muslim Bakery who was interested in baking bread.

One of Bey's sons- Antar Bey- took over the bakery and mortgaged the property to cover back taxes and other costs before defaulting. Antar was shot dead in October 2005 in what police say was a botched carjacking.

A month later, men wearing suits and bow ties swarmed into a pair of West Oakland corner stores run by Yemeni grocers , smashing bottles of alcohol and windows. The shotgun used to kill Chauncey Bailey was stolen from one of these stores. Yusef Bey IV, the new head of the bakery, and an associate were arrested after surveillance camera footage of the attack began circulating.

According to the Chauncey Bailey project, Oakland Police Sgt. Derwin Longmire interceded on Bey IV's behalf with other officers investigating the market attacks.

Fast forward to 2007, when Bey IV and his associates decide to raise money for the bakery that's more than $1 million in debt by kidnapping and robbing drug dealers. In May 2007, they allegedly kidnapped two women who they thought were customers of an East Oakland drug dealer and began interrogating them in a vacant house when they were scared off by a passing patrol car.

The morning after Bailey's murder, Oakland Police arrested 19 members of the bakery in a series of pre-dawn raids on the bakery's four locations as well as other properties owned by Bey IV on probable cause warrants. Devaugndre Broussard, a 19 year old handyman at the bakery, initially confessed to being the triggerman who killed Bailey.

Bey IV was taken into custody on the earlier kidnapping charges and was secretly videotaped in a San Leandro Police interview room with his brother Joshua Bey and associate Tamon Haflin. In earlier interviews with the police, Bey IV denied knowing anything about the shooting of Bailey.

The lead investigator in the Bailey homicide was none other than Sgt. Derwin Longmire. A series of recorded phone calls turned over to Alameda County prosecutors in 2008 revealed that Bey IV and Longmire were good friends and that Longmire may have shifted the focus of the Bailey investigation away from Bey IV.

Broussard had also since recanted his his confession, saying that Bey IV had convinced him to take the fall. The unrelated kidnapping charges against Bey IV were dismissed by an Alameda County Superior Court Judge in April 2009, although prosecutors immediately re-filed charges in the case. Bey IV is also standing trial for real-estate fraud where another judge ruled that Yusuf Bey cannot act as his own attorney.

Yusuf Bey IV's attorney, Lorna Patton Brown, was alleged to have smuggled a hit-list of witnesses out of prison for Yusuf back in March of this year. The list was delivered to Bey IV's family and accomplices on the outside.

Of course, according to the NAACP and most press outlets, the tea party movement is far more dangerous than the Nation of Islam splinter group (or it's bakeries). I'm not sure how to break this to Keith Olberman and the good people (with plenty of time on their hands) at Media Matters, but however fringe Bey's group might be, they've already racked up a body count of black murder victims than a group of Americans expressing their first amendment rights.

Just some food for thought courtesy of Your Black Muslim Bakery.