Engineer dies in runaway train near Trail
The Transportation Safety Board is sending investigators to look into what they believe was a runaway train derailment in Trail that has left one engineer missing.
April 25, 2007
TRAIL — It was the noise and thick smoke that witnesses remember most about the runaway Canadian Pacific train that hurtled down what is called the
steepest grade in North America Monday, derailing and killing the engineer.
“I couldn’t see the trestle for the smoke from the brakes,” said Mike Duckworth, who watched the train race by. “In a matter of seconds it was gone.”
By the time he climbed up the embankment, “all I could see was a cloud of dust and the wreckage in the distance.”
What Duckworth and others witnessed was a catastrophic derailment that killed the engineer and injured a conductor and a trainman, who both jumped from the train as it sped down the five-kilometre spur line between Warfield and Trail.
Dan Holbrook, rail safety manager for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said Tuesday the grade is the steepest in North America.
For more than 24 hours, Canadian Pacific and its employees held out hope that the engineer had escaped, but Tuesday evening, searchers pulled his body from the wreckage.
Reality hit home as cranes began to lift the two locomotives from where they had plowed into an embankment after crossing a trestle over Highway 22, the main route into Trail.
Just up the tracks on the other side of the highway, 10 other cars, including seven filled with fertilizer, had broken away from the engines. Only three empty ammonia tank cars were left on the track. The rest lay in an accordion-like mess, with some of the cars split open, spilling fertilizer down the embankment.
CP Rail official Breanne Feigel issued a statement a couple of hours after the engineer’s body was found, saying the company and its 16,000 workers “want to express our sincere and heartfelt sorrow to the friends and family” of the dead engineer.
The company was not releasing the name of the engineer or the two injured men. Feigel said CP Rail’s focus “is to deal with the tragedy and assist the family in its time of need.”
She said the company has launched a full investigation into the derailment and would be cooperating with the Transportation Safety Board to find the cause of the derailment.
She said she could not respond to reports from people who said the rain was a runaway, as the investigation is still in the preliminary stage.
Duckworth, whose auto repair shop lies in the shadow of the trestle near Warfield, watched in astonishment as the 13-unit train careered down the track.
“I see them go over that trestle dead slow. But this time I’d never seen it go that fast. I couldn’t see the trestle for the smoke off the brakes. It was going at least 50 miles an hour.”
Shortly after the train raced by, the conductor and trainman bailed out.
Kelly Hutchison, a foreman at a nearby cement factory, was just stepping down from a forklift when he looked up to see the train flash by.
“At that point, he was going three times faster than I’d ever seen a train go on this line,” Hutchison said. “I didn’t think he’d make the corner around to the [highway] trestle. I’d heard his whistle blow and I could hear the brakes screeching. It was a runaway for sure.”
The accident occurred about 3 p.m. Monday as the two engines were supposed to slowly make their way down the steep, winding line, a private spur owned by Teck-Cominco. The train was coming from Teck’s fertilizer plant and was to be marshalled into a larger train in Trail.
At some point, the engines appear to have gone out of control. The train screamed down the winding track as the engineer tried to gain control.
Read more at the National Post