Canadian trains too long: TSB investigators

VANCOUVER — Canada’s trains are too long, increasing the risk of derailments, according to an investigation by the Transportation Safety Board.

According to the Kirkland Lake Northern News, Dan Holbrook, the safety board’s manager of western region rail and pipelines, says a number of derailments across Canada have involved very long trains, which are loaded to help the companies efficiently deliver freight but, he says, also go against conventional safe loading practices.

Companies are loading trains in such a way as to create “extremely high in-train forces,” he says, that can lead to derailments. “The safety board has been concerned when what we would call questionable train marshalling practices combined with extreme train lengths to create very high in-train forces,” says Holbrook

CN says recent derailments not due to
longer trains; investigators disagree

In April, the safety board issued a “railway safety advisory” to Transport Canada over concerns about a high number of derailments on CN Rail’s Kingston, Ont., subdivision, including a 125-car derailment near Squamish, B.C., last August.

CN spokesman Jim Feeny told the newspaper the company doesn’t believe train length had anything to do with that derailment.

George Fowler, the main safety board investigator on the case, disagrees. “It was a serious issue with the Cheakamus, because they were running trains longer than they really should have there,” he told the Northern News.

The American Association of Railroads, which represents the major freight railroads of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, has recommended that trains be marshalled with heavy loads at the front, behind the locomotives, and empties at the rear.

In 2003 Transport Canada wrote to the Railway Association of Canada, which represents the Canadian railway industry, to discuss developing rules for train lengths and weights.

In response to a July 14, CN derailment in Oakville, Ont., Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon announced a restriction on certain CN train speeds in the province.

The order applies to continuous welded rail territory (non-jointed rail), where construction or significant maintenance of line work is being undertaken. Under these conditions, freight train speeds are restricted to 10 mph and passenger train speeds to 30 mph.

— with files from the Kirkland Lake Northern News