Transport Canada has ordered Canadian Pacific to stop leaving trains unattended without setting handbrakes near the site of 2019’s fatal runaway accident on Kicking Horse Pass after a February incident, the CBC reports, but the railroad is disputing the regulator’s assertion that the event in question constituted “an immediate threat.”
In question is a Feb. 15, 2021, incident in which a loaded grain train — of 8,309 feet and 18,878 tons, according to a Transport Canada letter published by the CBC — was left on a grade with only its air brakes set when the train’s power and crew was sent further down the pass to assist another train. The railroad told the CBC that “securement by handbrakes or other means was not required under Canadian operating rules,” and that the location “was not a mountain grade and there was no reasonable safety concern of unintentional movement.” The railroad said the train was not unattended, because another crew was “on site nearby … in position to act if required,” but Transport Canada’s order says that crew, on a train stopped 1.5 car lengths behind the grain train, could have taken “little or no action” if the grain train began to move.
The broadcaster said Transport Canada declined to say why no penalties resulted from the incident, but that it continues to examine the case and could still impose fines or penalties.
The CBC report references the fatal Feb. 4, 2019, derailment near Field, British Columbia [see “Three dead in CP derailment …,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 4, 2019], which is now the subject of an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police [see “Digest: RCMP opens investigation …,” News Wire, Dec. 17, 2020], as well as the 2013 disaster that killed 47 in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. The complicated series of events that led to that event included a train left unattended without a sufficient number of handbrakes being set [see “Burkhardt: Lac-Mégantic jurors made right decision,” News Wire, Jan. 19, 2018].
Your headline is only partially true. The first sentence in the article says “Transport Canada has ordered Canadian Pacific to stop leaving trains unattended without setting handbrakes “. That should be the headline.
We expect shoddy journalism from the “Mainstream” media [read CNN’s description of interchange in Stephens’ article about CP+KCS]. We expect better from Trains.
Don’t they have it figured out after Lac Magnetic: You don’t let trains sit on a grade with out extensive hand brakes and chaining.
All CP was doing was sending message to it’s operating crews. The message reads, “We only care about the stock price and operating ratio. Your lives are unimportant.”
Transport Canada needs to put Keith Creel, always wearing a broad smile and looking so confident in every photo you see of him, in the hot seat and make him speak to this. One wonders how the regulators would be viewing CP’s mad dash to “marry” KCS if this grain train had gotten away, ran down the grade, and slammed into its crew and engines while they were assisting another train. C’mon TC. Don’t be scared.
Correct me if I am wrong, but for a train’s air brakes to fail, the brakes would have to bleed off in some large fraction of the train’s cars. Not a single point of failure. On the other hand they will bleed off after a certain amount of time. The question is how long? In any case, seems to me to be taking a risk. Why not set the hand brakes on the required number cars or have the following train couple up? Would seem to be the safer course.
Michael, it was not a cut of cars, it was an entire train of approximately 150 loaded grain hoppers sitting without the head end power. Not shown in this post is what the crew had to say sitting in the train behind the loaded grain train.
I am leaning toward TC on this. Relying only on air brakes to hold a cut of cars on a grade is not the safest course. A single point failure (air brakes) often leads to unintended consequences.