The Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway and three of its employees have been charged with criminal negligence in connection with a derailment that killed 47 people and incinerated much of downtown Lac-Mégantic, Quebec , last July, officials said on Monday. In a brief statement, the office of Quebec’s director of criminal prosecutions said that Thomas Harding, the engineer and sole employee working on the train, was among those arrested. Federal accident investigators have found that Mr. Harding failed to apply the minimum number of required hand brakes after parking the train for the night. The train was carrying crude oil from North Dakota. A fire in the locomotive led to the loss of the train’s air brakes. Combined with the lack of hand brakes, that eventually allowed the train to run out of control into the town. The unexpectedly volatile nature of the Bakken crude oil led […]