Ecliptic Express Incident

The Ecliptic Express Incident was an even in mid-1998 marked by the deliberate spread of the t-Virus amongst a train carrying Umbrella personnel. It was one of several such incidents as part of a

Background
Ten years prior, the Umbrella executive and General Manager of the defunct Umbrella Research Center, Dr. James Marcus, was assassinated on the orders of Oswell E. Spencer and his body dumped into the nearby Treatment Plant. His latest experiment, the "Queen Leech", was dumped alongside him and began to assimilate itself into its creator's body. After ten years, the new Leech/Marcus merger began to attack Umbrella sites within and around the Arklay Mountains as vengeance for its host's death.

At the time of his attacks, Albert Wesker and William Birkin were assigned with re-opening the abandoned Research Center under its original role as an executive training site (already closed to personnel for twenty years). Both the First and Second Investigation Units were lost to B.O.W.s Marcus had released, along with his own Leeches. As such, contact was lost between Wesker and Birkin, and the facility.

Incident
Unaware of the attack, and with knowledge of concurrent events at the Arklay Laboratory being surpressed, the Ecliptic Express was sent down Umbrella's private train line to the Research Center filled with research personnel. At 20:17 on July 23, Marcus attacked the express train with his leeches, infecting the train's entire complement along with releasing an experimental scorpion B.O.W..

Two hours later, the S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team made an emergency landing due to engine failure, during an investigation of bizarre killings in the Raccoon Forest. While they were intended to investigate the Spencer Mansion and be killed as part of "X Day", they deviated from Umbrella's intentions when the discovery of an abandoned MP prisoner convoy and the lack of its prisoner, 2Lt. Billy Coen, had Captain Enrico Marini's team search the immediate area. The team's rookie medic, Rebecca Chambers, found her way onto the stopped train.

Minutes into her entry, Rebecca had already awoken the zombified passengers and discovered that Billy Coen had hidden inside the train. Uncooperative with her attempt at arresting him, Billy left moments before S.T.A.R.S. officer Edward Dewey entered the train, "dying" from his animal bites soon after.

While Rebecca investigated the train further, Wesker and Birkin successfully sent the USS Delta Team to regain control of the train and move it. Unfortunately for the two Umbrella researchers, the USS team was compromised immediately after when Marcus' leeches attacked and infected them, leaving the train accelerating to the Research Center uncontrolled. Rebecca and Billy found a key card to access the engine and used its emergency brakes to stop the train, knowing the track would not last forever. It was too late to prevent the train from making a fiery crash into the Research Center's station, however, though the brakes certainly lowered the damage it would have caused.

Consequences
The Ecliptic Express Incident was the event in which Umbrella began to seriously consider that someone was infecting their personnel as part of a campaign.