By Anna Mehler Paperny and Allison Lampert
TORONTO/MONTREAL, Jan 19 (Reuters) - A Canadian jury on Friday found three former rail workers not guilty of criminal negligence causing death in connection with a 2013 crude-by-rail derailment that killed 47 in the town of Lac Megantic in Quebec.
The downtown section of Lac Megantic was destroyed following the July 2013 derailment of a Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd train carrying crude oil.
The derailment was one of the deadliest rail accidents in Canadian history. It sparked calls to improve rail safety, prompting Canada to end use of one-man crews to move dangerous goods and enhance protection standards for tank cars transporting crude.
The jury acquitted operations manager Jean Demaître, 53, rail traffic controller Richard Labrie, 59, and locomotive engineer Tom Harding, 56.
The three worked for the now-defunct Montreal Maine & Atlantic railway, which operated the runaway train that was carrying 7.7 million liters (2 million gallons) of volatile Bakken crude oil, according to a 2014 report.
"It was a long process, but now it's over and my only hope is that we can actually turn the page and become anonymous again, as we were before 2013," an emotional Labrie told reporters in the courthouse.
The verdict followed nine days of deliberations and multiple questions posed by the jury. lawyer, Tom Walsh, said this was "a very fair verdict," adding that his client was "terribly relieved and terribly thankful to the system."
"He will always be the poster boy for Lac Megantic and the Lac Megantic tragedy, whether we like it or not," his lawyer said.
The trial comes amid an expected resurgence in rail shipments of less volatile Canadian crude in 2018 as tight pipeline capacity is pushing more oil onto railroads.