System Information
Windows - Asus GTX 1060 6Gb

Blender Version
Broken: 2.78.4 7ae9d09
Worked: didn't ever to my knowledge.

When you're doing an alembic pipeline say from maya, you usually will endup replacing alembic files with updated ones, though you might not want to have to close blender, and reopen it so if you have blender open and happen to update the Alembic file with a new one, that IE differs only in animation that will crash blender, i'm attaching 2 ABC files that are similar, will just have a minor difference for you to try.

Open blender 2 blender instances
make an animation on one of them
export ABC
On the second blender instance import ABC file.
then in the first blender instance do some changes, reexport and replace the ABC file you made before.
when you go to the second blender instance
move the timeline
it'll crash.

so for making the process quicker I created 2 alembic files from the same project:

let me know if you need anything else!
Cheers!