As a qualified yet blacklisted CNR Canadian Yard-foreman/ Conductor, is is outrageous indeed what the managerment of the railway has done to the community of Lac-Me'gantic, Quebec. The former CNR taught that safety is the first consideration and rule of the Railway. This so-called accident proves the point the Canadian Railway Unions have been making all along. Safety has gone out the window with the austerity implemented since the sixties.

Five people per freight crew is the minimum crew size required to cover the safety codes. That is because the train has two sides to it, and a front and a back, which must be covered by four railworkers: two in a caboose in the back of the train, and two an engeneer and second engeneer in the front to look after the movement of the train. In addition, there must be a switchman in the front end of the engine to look after switches whould the CTC--Centralized Traffic Control fail. That is fundamental to the movement and safety of trains.

The feet on the ground cannot be replaced by robo-machines operated from long external distances, as machines run by an external power source sometimes fail and, quite frequently, cuse accidents and damage to the communities that are within the scope of the railway.

Especially after the U.S. Imperialist takeover of the Canadian Railways, companies have been using austerity programs to implement automation to replace the social responsibility and conciousness that a properly comprised crew contributes to railway safety.

It is entirely reckless behaviour on the part of the management on Canadian Railways to implement the new rules of the foreign owners of the CNR, BCR, CPR, and others. More than 150,000 Canadian railworkers lost their jobs, many blacklisted for fighting back.

The austerity programs of the railways do not work for the safety of the working classes and the communities they live in. The present situation is unsustainable, and shows the reckless abandonment of governments at all levels who permit the monopoly capitalist owners to risk the lives and property of the Canadian and Quebec people.

Let me illustrate the failure to respect union and company safety laws here. Each train initiates in a railyard. During the sixties, there were thousands of car knockers, a special safety feature in the initial railyard. This was a group of men (in those days women were not allowed to work in the running trades) who would tie the train together dutifully, knocking at each wheel with steel hammers to check the brakes and condition of the steel wheels etc., while also tying together the air hoses connecting the trains air brakes.

The car knockers had the power to spot good and bad per car, checking the manual braking systems as well as the engine-controlled air bakes that are applied the full length of the train. Bad brakes or other failures on a wagon or boxcar were either fixed or the railcar was removed from the train and replaced with one that worked fully, safety wise.

The jobs of those car knockers have been eliminated. There is literally no one checking the mechanical safety of each and every constituent part of the train anymore, as car knockers did. Does that sound like progessive advancement? No because it was not replaced with better mechanisms of control.

Clearly in Lac-Me'gantic, the cars on the tracks left at the top of a hill did not have the necessary brakes applied so the train could be safely secured. It cannot roll down a hill if the brakes are applied and working properly the length of the train. The attemps to blame firemen or others who are not experienced in securing a train is irresponsible.

The necessity to apply proper regulations on Canadas's railways has gone out the window with the U.S. Imperialist takeover of Canada's railways. Neglect and disallowing of the naturally evolved railway rules, while maximizing the private profits for the paper shuffling stockholders, is the only consideration in the rail industry.

Governments facilitating this destruction must be held to due process of safety laws, and made to pay for the damages. Kind of a reparations for the criminal neglect of not supplying correct crew sizes to uphold the workers safety laws so long in the making of the railways.

That includes the necessity to Electrify the world's railways with the renewables such as wind, tidal, and solar power which tranforms to electricity and is more power than all fossil fuels globally. That will end the transportation of coal, gas, oil or atomic energy fuels, and thereby make the railways safe again. Oil tankers on present railway infastructure is extremely dangerous, and if the correct safety procedures are not applied more Lac-Me'gantic disasters are inevitable.

Workers of the world unite!! End pollution wars, not endless wars for more and more pollution. Ye yet have a world to win!! Viva socialist liberation!!