VIA Rail derailment - 3 dead

[Puddington]

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1136929--via-rail-derailment-3-dead-more-hurt-in-burlington-crash?bn=1

VIA Rail's Niagara train to Tornto derailed and three are dead (the engine crew) and many are injured... no details of cause yet....

[Scottl]

That is terrible, and university Reading Week is just ending.  Probably lots of students on board going back to school. 

Images on TV news showed the F40 lead on it's side and reported the dead were VIA crew.

[Puddington]

All three dead were the locomotive crew, why three is beyond me.... there are lot's of injuries. The derailment was in an industrial part of Burlington, a slow order area as memory serves, a lot of industrial swithing track... one wonders if a switch was open.... the F40 was toppled on it's side and the cosnist "zippered" so...........

CN track I assume..... can't confirm, in that area I can be either CPR or CNR..........

God bless the departed crew member and their families.

[Puddington]

Latest from the Toronto Star:

..BURLINGTON, Ont. - A slight bump followed by people and luggage flying through the air is how one passenger is describing a train derailment Sunday west of Toronto that killed three Via employees and left three passengers with severe injuries.

The time between the train leaving the tracks and the crash was only about 10 seconds, but it felt like "forever," said Deanna Villela of Welland, Ont.

Villela was among 75 passengers travelling on train No. 92 from Niagara Falls, Ont., to Toronto along the busy rail corridor when the train left the tracks around 3:30 p.m. Area residents described a chaotic scene of emergency vehicles, sirens blaring and helicopters buzzing overhead.

The locomotive and one passenger car flipped onto their sides and crashed into a small trackside building. At least two passengers car behind it were driven off the tracks into a L-shape. All six cars derailed, a Via official said.

The three dead were Via engineers — one a trainee — who were riding in the locomotive. A fourth Via worker in locomotive was also injured.

Amid the twisted metal and debris emergency crews scrambled to pull passengers to safety. Some passengers were carried away on boards and stretchers while others, looking dazed and battered, were led out of the wreckage by emergency workers.

"There's no question it's very tragic. We're a relatively small company, we're a family, we know everyone by name," Via chief operating officer John Marginson said at the scene.

"We certainly feel for the families of the colleagues that we lost."

Marginson called the wreckage a "very powerful scene to say the least."

"It's very premature to speculate ... but obviously something went very wrong," he said.

"Night has fallen upon us here so the investigation is going to take some time."

Three passengers were airlifted to hospital, one with a heart attack, another with a broken leg and the third with a back injury.

Reports say one of the passengers airlifted was a woman in her 70s.

Forty-two other passengers also suffered less-serious injuries and were either treated at the scene or sent to local hospitals.

"We've seen 20 people, the vast majority of them were adults. We have had some discharged already," said Mario Joannette, spokesman for Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in Burlington.

"The people we've seen for the most part had injuries that were minor to serious. The very serious people in the derailment were moved to the Hamilton-area hospitals, the Hamilton General and the Children's Hospital in Hamilton."

Of the 75 passengers some 30 of them were well enough to continue on to Toronto's Union Station by bus.

Transportation Safety Board investigators were on the scene Sunday. A key piece of evidence will be the train's equivalent of a black box which recorded the event. Weather was not believed to be the cause, as it was clear and dry at the time of the crash.

The train came off the tracks at Plains Road and King Road near Aldershot station. It was not immediately known how fast the train was travelling.

Dorthy Beattie, who lives near the crash site, said she started hearing helicopters overhead around 3:30 p.m.

"I knew there was something amiss but I didn't know what and I honestly did not hear it derailing," Beattie said.

"So I had a little walk out just to have a look and it's like a World War Three zone around here."

Highway 403 was shut down in the area and GO Transit said its commuter trains were turned back at Burlington.

Via is asking people seeking information about passengers on the train to call 1-888-842-6141.
...

[Puddington]

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1137318--via-identifies-engineers-killed-in-derailment?bn=1

Accident happened at a series of crossovers and switches... but CN says track conditions don't appear to be an issue....um...ok......

[cv_acr]

All three dead were the locomotive crew, why three is beyond me....

Trainee...

The derailment was in an industrial part of Burlington, a slow order area as memory serves, a lot of industrial swithing track...

The derailment happened directly on CN's main line, at a CTC control point/interlocking at the east end of Aldershot. One of the routes from this interlocking feeds into Aldershot yard, but the VIA train was not on any sort of industrial track.

one wonders if a switch was open....

Absolutely not possible. There are many things that are possible but that's not one of them. The crossovers at this point are fully CTC controlled. If there were set against the movement the signal would never clear. Derailing because they took the crossovers too fast is a possibility (and has been suggested) but we won't know what really happened until the TSB finishes their investigation.

the F40 was toppled on it's side and the cosnist "zippered" so...........

Once the engine tips and stops moving, the momentum of the cars will cause them to pile up accordian fashion behind the engine. See that all the time in freight derailments as well.

CN track I assume..... can't confirm, in that area I can be either CPR or CNR..........

CN track.

[Puddington]

I disagree that CTC means a switch or other track element could not have been mis-aligned. There was a track gang in the immediate area and having spoken with some CPR guys today they said, while unlikely, it's possible that something was wrong. The system isn't "fool proof" We'll have to know what that crew was doing before the possibility can be dismissed... I agree it's not likely however.

They have the "black box" so hopefully speed data will be forthcoming. The mainline speed posted and the speed for taking interlocking are significantly different so if they took a diverging route for some unknown reason at track sped "it's a bad day"......newspaper say the two crew members were very experienced.....

[Puddington]

http://www.thestar.com/news/transportation/article/1139071--via-train-derailment-excessive-speed-caused-via-derailment-that-killed-3-investigators-say?bn=1

A senior crew; over 60 years engineer experience; a familiar route and the black box says they were going three times the speed allowed for going through a cross over/diverting route.....me thinks something isn't adding up here...................

[Scottl]

It is a shocking revelation, but this is entirely inconsistent with an experienced crew familiar with the route.  I'll wait for the TSB report before judging this.

It does suggest the potential value of some kind of voice recording system in addition to the standard data recorder in railway locomotives.

[Puddington]

http://www.canadianrailwayobservations.com/mar2012via16.htm

Canadian Railway Observations has some interesting stuff on the accident including a map

[Scottl]

Did you see the mention of potential service to Peterborough?   There was an item down the page.

[Puddington]

Did you see the mention of potential service to Peterborough?   There was an item down the page.

Yes; I'm involved with that effort.....

[lock4244]

What effort is that Pud? The $350M GO effort? A lot of $$$ needed to get the Havelock anywhere near where it needs to be for passenger service. I'm reasonably familiar with the line and the 10MPH is ot excessively slow for that track!

Hope it never happens unless it's Budd RDC's like it used to be. The line has too much charm to be dragging into the present...

[Puddington]

ROW rehabilitation is the number one key and cost - four firms looking at it including CPR..... I also want the RDC's back (albeit remotored for low emisions) alas it "ain't goin happen"... rode them back and forth between 'da Patch and the center of the universe whilst going to Trent......

[lock4244]

ROW rehabilitation is the number one key and cost - four firms looking at it including CPR..... I also want the RDC's back (albeit remotored for low emisions) alas it "ain't goin happen"... rode them back and forth between 'da Patch and the center of the universe whilst going to Trent......

Thank God the Province is bankrupt and the line is 1) high cost  and 2) low priority compared to other projects like the GO extension to Bowmanville. CP is too cheap to upgrade their Belleville, Galt, MacTier and Parry Sound Subs for freight traffic (longer sidings, better signals), so it'd be pretty ironic if they put scarce cash into the Havelock! It's hard to underestimate the scope of work required to get the Havelock up to passenger speeds... might as well build a new line (I suggest Port Hope to P-boro via Millbrook), though the Havelock could tap that Pickering Airport - ha!

I dunno, having read the rider projections for the P-boro line, seems like putting a match to perfectly good borrowed money. Too bad when VIA left the Province didn't step in like they really should have and kept the service... I recall watching the Budds slip past Agincourt Yard as a wee little rail rat.