Okay but Lac Megantic had nothing to do with "monster trains" iirc. Understaffing maybe, but not monster trains. AFAIK, the Lac Megantic disaster happened lik

Okay but Lac Megantic had nothing to do with "monster trains" iirc. Understaffing maybe, but not monster trains. AFAIK, the Lac Megantic disaster happened like this: A train was parked at the top of a hill, the locomotive that was powering the pneumatic brake was failing and smoking, and the conductor did not manually set enough of the manual back-up hand-brakes to keep the train in place if the failing locomotive was shut off and brake-pressure was lost, and he failed to properly test the hand brakes before leaving for the night. The brakes failed and so it went down hill while trying to break, which naturally led to sparks, fire, derailment, and ultimately explosion. More manpower or supervision could've prevented the disaster, or better maintenance on the locomotive. Or better automation on brakes. But it was not a matter of length, which seems to be the main thrust of this article.