REVELSTOKE, British Columbia — The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is investigating a Canadian Pacific derailment inside the Mount MacDonald Tunnel on Rogers Pass that occurred Feb. 5, the Revelstoke Review newspaper reports.
The newspaper reports that the TSB said that the train was westbound through the tunnel when 11 cars “began to lean,” leading to the derailment at about 11:30 p.m. The intermodal train involved was not carrying any containers of dangerous material, CP reported. No injuries were reported.
The Mount MacDonald Tunnel, a single-track, 9.11-mile bore, opened in 1988 and is the longest rail tunnel in North America. It is about 37 miles east of Revelstoke in the Selkirk Mountains.
A CP Service Advisory we got Tuesday morning said: “CP teams continue efforts safely progressing repairs in the MacDonald tunnel with a track outage affecting operations between Revelstoke and Golden, B.C. Completion of the work is expected late Wednesday evening. We do have a route around the site using the Connaught tunnel. Customers who route traffic in this lane can expect delays at this time.”
This reminds me of the Port Huron Mi-Sarnia Ontario tunnel derailment of 40 cars plus a DPU back in June of 2019…They had the tunnel cleared, inspected, new track laid, chemicals cleaned up, and trains running thru it again in just under a month…remarkable considering the wreck was pretty close to the middle of the 2 mile tunnel under the St. Clair River. The cars were pancaked on top of one another, but the tunnel wasn’t breeched. Amazing how they cleared the wreckage.
I think it’s gonna be a bit of a challenge to get the tunnel cleared.
Ewww, that’s gonna be fun to clean up.