It made a tremendous noise which caught the attention of everyone within earshot. Brakes were being applied so hard that the smoke from them obscured the bridge over which the engines passed before tipping over on the curve below. Nearby residents had watched dozens of Canadian Pacific trains descend the
steepest rail grade in North America (the grade is 4%, twice the normal grade found on mountain railways) in the past. But as they witnessed this train descend at what was described as three to five times normal speed, they all knew this couldn't have a happy conclusion.
Up the grade, above the bridge over Highway 22, six cars filled with granular fertilizer detached from the engines and derailed, spilling their loads of fertilizer. The two locomotives and one car crossed the bridge then derailed on the curve following, almost in the Teck Cominco yard, owner of the cars. A conductor and a trainman had jumped from the speeding train moments before the crash, sustaining minor injuries, but the engineer remained inside. His body was found in the wreckage almost 24 hours later.
The
Transportation Safety Board report, issued later, stated that:
"The board's report released Tuesday concludes the train was going too fast, its braking systems failed, and the engineer may not have
understood the importance of closely following procedures on steep hills.
The board's report said the train was already going too fast when it hit the top of the steep hill. Then one braking system failed and
another couldn't carry the extra load.
The train continued to pick up speed and was travelling at about 70 kilometres and hour when it left the track, more than 50 kilometres an hour faster than the maximum permissible speed limit on that stretch.
'The dynamic brake cut out and the locomotive engineer increased the locomotive independent brake to the fully-applied position; however the train speed continued to increase,' the report states.
The report concluded there was considerable friction fade in the braking system, a phenomenon where heat build-up in the
wheels results in a loss of braking capacity."
The short spur line is part of a line that was originally built in about 1896 to haul ore down the steep hill from mines on Red Mountain in Rossland to the smelter, later the Cominco Smelter, in Trail. In the 1930s Cominco built a fertilizer plant in Warfield, just a mile or so above the smelter, which used byproducts from the smelter to make fertilizer. This plant continued to use the section of railway line between Warfield and the smelter. As an indication of the steepness of the grade, there is about five miles of track covering the one mile between the smelter and the fertilizer plant. Due to the steepness, trains running here are very short, using two locomotives to pull 10 or 12 cars up and down the grade.
The National Post article is reproduced in part below.
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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
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