TSB recommends fault reporting for railways

OTTAWA — The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) says there is still no formal protocol to report and record the kind of mechanical failure that caused an unintended detachment in rural Manitoba in 2009.

The TSB released a report yesterday that looked at an incident in which a tank car containing thousands of kilograms of flammable liquid detached from the rest of the train near Dugald, Man. Fortunately it rolled to a stop and did not derail.

The fault turned out to be a broken stub sill – a connecting part in use on about 41,000 tank cars in North America, 35,000 of which haul dangerous goods.

A report by CBC News quotes senior investigator Rob Johnston as saying it’s fortunate there have been no serious incidents involving broken stub sills.

Before the mid-1990s, an average train in main-track service was about 1,500 metres long and weighed 5,500 to 6,500 tonnes. Today, some are more than 3,600 metres long and weigh more than 9,000 tonnes.

"That’s a big difference," Johnston said. "Trains and car design criteria must evolve over time and keep pace with operational demands or accidents may happen. This is a major safety concern."

The TSB is recommending that Transport Canada co-ordinate with the railway industry and other North American regulators on a process for reporting stub sill failures.

It says a centralized system is needed to keep track of problems and repairs to help predict possible failures. Similar systems are in place for other critical train components, the TSB said.