There were two freight train derailments in BC in just two days.
The first derailment occurred at 10 PM on Friday, about 13 kilometres east of Revelstoke.
The train derailed after colliding with a stationary train on the tracks, causing four locomotives and cars carrying grain to derail.
A freight train hitting a non-moving train isn’t as crazy as it sounds. It can take a freight train moving 90 kilometres per hour almost 2 km to stop after the emergency brake is used.
A locomotive engineer would need to be able to see a couple of kilometres ahead for a chance to prevent a collision with a stationary train.
The collision on Friday caused a fire that was put out by Saturday. While the fire was active, Revelstoke residents were greeted with an unpleasant smell.
“It smelled somewhat like maybe burning garbage — that plastic-y odour…It was an unpleasant odour,” Steven DeRousie, head of Revelstoke Fire Rescue Services, told CBC News.
The derailment sent two crew members to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Another Train Derailment Near Field
The second train derailed near Field, a common place for trains to run off the tracks, especially at the infamous Field Hill.
The derailment happened at the Ottertail station sometime on Saturday.
Once again, the derailment resulted from a freight train colliding with a parked train.
Why So Many Accidents?
What the hell is going on?
There have been three freight train collisions in BC in less than two months.
These derailments have one thing in common.
They involved Canadian Pacific Kansas City Rail (CPKC) freight trains.
A Cochrane locomotive engineer, Mark Bretherton, believes the frequent derailments are more than coincidence.
He claims the derailments result from the CPKC putting profits over safety.
“There’s an old saying on the railway, ‘Uphill slow, downhill fast, profit first and safety last.’ It’s a known problem that’s been going back for decades, and things are not improving,” he told CBC News.
Tragedy On The Rails
Bretherton is on stress leave due to his concerns about train safety issues and has no intention of returning unless conditions improve.
He isn’t the only person with concerns.
Teamsters Canada, the union representing more than 9,000 rail workers across Canada, is also signalling the alarm about train safety.
Meanwhile, CPKC claims safety is one of its five foundations of successful railroading. The railway recorded its 17th straight year with the industry’s lowest train accident rate and a 15 percent improvement in the personal injury rate.
The CPKC’s record paints a pretty picture but glosses over the railway’s questionable operations.
In 2019, a CP (now CPKC) freight train transporting 159 rail cars, including 13 dangerous goods, departed Calgary for Port Coquitlam, BC.
While descending Field Hill, a section of track known for being steep and curvy, the air pressure in the train’s brakes suddenly increased, causing the automatic release of the air brakes.
A train-initiated release of the brakes is called a “UDR,” an ‘undesired release.’
To counter a UDR, the train’s locomotive engineer must quickly reapply the brakes.
According to the Transportation Safety Board (TSB), heavy cars must be placed as close to the head of the train as possible to reduce the risk of derailment.
This particular freight train was put together using destination marshalling, which means the train cars were grouped in blocks destined for the same location.
In this case, the heavy cars were located at the rear of the trail in preparation for the first stop in Golden, BC.
When the UDR occurred, the heavy rail cars rammed into the empty cars near the middle, derailing 15 empty cars.
The tragic crash resulted in the death of three crew members: Dylan Paradis, Andrew Dockrell and Daniel Waldenberger-Bulmer.
A TSB investigation found that the train had experienced an earlier UDR six hours earlier, yet the CP railway decided to proceed anyway.
Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
Bretherton was steering a CP train down the same hill a month before the fatal derailment. The train’s brakes malfunctioned during his descent, but he managed to stop.
When he alerted the rail traffic controller, he was told to continue.
Bretherton warned the new crew of the faulty brakes when it was time for a crew shift change.
The new crew was also told to continue on, and the train derailed as Bretherton feared.
In 2022, the TSB released the results of its three-year investigation of the CP accident and found that the railway “normalized” potentially fatal problems like old, failing breaks.
The TSB found that many CP train crews reported brake issues on Field Hill over the years.
The latest train derailments suggest that the CPKC hasn’t changed things.
The railway’s action (or lack thereof) puts both crew members and communities at risk.
Freight trains frequently pass through Cochrane and Canmore. All it takes is a train derailment like Lac-Mégantic to wipe these towns off the map.
That’s why Bretherton winces every time a train passes by his home in Cochrane.
Even if we don’t see or hear about them, train accidents are not infrequent, and they put our communities at risk.
Railways like CPKC need to be held accountable.
