ENSIGN, Alberta — No injuries were reported when 39 cars of a Canadian Pacific train derailed early Monday morning near the community of Ensign.
Global News reports the accident occurred about 1:35 a.m., according to the railroad. The Vulcan County, Alta., website reported that some cars involved carried residual amounts of anhydrous ammonia or liquid petroleum, but that no evacuations were required. The railroad anticipated restoring service through the area by Monday evening.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has sent an investigative team to the derailment site to “gather information and assess the occurrence.”
Ensign is located about 48 miles southeast of Calgary.
Mr. Lampman, Mr Salisbury,
My sincere thanks for the links. I will be doing some reading now.
You are welcome John, happy reading
NTSB investigates transport accidents in the US. Their accident reports are archived all the back to 1913 or so. Fascinating reading in some reports.
>>>dotlibrary.specialcollection.net<<<
I would assume (I know) that the TSB in Canada has something similar. No idea where to find it on the web.
Here is the link for Canadian TSB rail investigatons.
https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rail/index.html
Don’t forget it would be interest to know train length and car placement. Ever see a 180 car train with empty bulkhead flats near the front? Just a derailment waiting to happen.
I don’t know about now but when I was working (pre-2007) there was some federal agency that has all of the reported derailment information, dates, times, causes, etc.
If it was being done then by a federal agency I’m sure they didn’t ever give up a task like that.
Is anyone aware of a place where all of these derail events are cataloged, with dates, times, causes? Even better, has any university or transportation agency done any analytics on these events?
News Wire gladly prints these derail bylines, but I never see much post event analysis unless souls are lost. Rail failures, switch fouls, PTC misses, bad trucks, failed bearings, etc.
When an airframe has a failure, the FAA goes back to look at suppliers, source of materials, quality of construction, etc. Surely with modern abilities we have the ability to collect more telemetry around these failures.
Does the failure of 2 Greenbrier or Trinity DOT-111 tank cars constitute an issue requiring review or do we need more failures? How many failures of say, Nucor made heavy rail is needed before more analysis is required. Was there an undetected failure in the fabrication process in the mill? Who decides its better to deal with derails than spend the money to replace defective rail?
Maybe this is too technical for the audience of Trains? I would like to think this would make great material for a cover story. Trains has always been good at breaking these items down for consumption.