The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway is filing for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and Canada. It is the most unsurprising outcome of the Lac-Megantic disaster in which an MMA tanker train crashed and burned killing 47 people and incinerating a large part of the community. The MMA was formed from orphan-like rail lines which themselves were facing bankruptcy. It was and remains a case of the small railways being super-vulnerable to the risks of business. The Lac-Megantic catastrophe was a business body blow by any measure. The CNR would gulp at the clean-up costs.
