Number of train derailment grows in Ont. municipality
By ROB LAMBERTI, QMI Agency

TORONTO - Durham Region is feeling a little lucky.
April 4, 2010

On Tuesday afternoon, eight rail cars in a slow-moving CN freight train came off CN's main track -- the busiest corridor in the country -- in Pickering behind the GO Station at Liverpool Rd., near Hwy. 401.

Like an accordion, the cars crumpled at their couplers, a few wheel assemblies were ripped off and the GO station was closed.

As the cars came to a screeching halt, temperatures began to rise under the collars of local politicians.
At the time of the derailment, a VIA Rail passenger train was speeding west to Toronto. It was about two minutes away from Pickering when notified of the accident and it stopped at Ajax.

This derailment marked the sixth in as many years in the region.

And every thought, even if just momentarily, focused on Kathleen Kellachan, 36, and her niece, Christine Harrington, 19, who were crushed to death in Whitby during a derailment six years ago.
On Jan. 14, 2004, westbound CP freight train 239 from Montreal lost its last three cars at the Garden St. overpass in Whitby. Cars and cargo fell onto Garden St. and a 25-tonne crate crushed a minivan and instantly killed Kellachan and Harrington.

It was the 39th car, CP 521173 carrying two containers of the poisonous material thioglycol, the only dangerous goods on the train, that was first to derail. Those containers didn't rupture.

Investigators found 60% of the outer rim of a wheel on that car was missing. The Transportation Safety Board ruled the wheel had a small subsurface defect since it was manufactured in 1988, and it wasn't detected.

Investigators also found seven broken rails and nine rail fractures in a 80-km stretch between Colborne and Whitby.
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Community activist and former Pickering councillor Maurice Brenner was driving over the bridge on Liverpool Rd. Tuesday when he noticed the train on the track under him accordion.

"It looked very surreal," he says. "Within a split second, it was like a domino effect with cars just being thrown everywhere. It was not something you would expect to see in a residential area, or an urban area.

"It was shocking," he says. "The first thing that came to mind was, 'Did somebody get hurt?'
"We were lucky. It could have been worse."

Brenner says the emergency response to the derailment was excellent, but the problem is that everything is geared to a reaction rather than prevention.

"I think the potential is very great," Brenner says. "When you have two derailments in the city of Pickering in a two-year time frame, in terms of probability, by no stretch of the imagination should that be considered a rarity."

Pickering Mayor David Ryan didn't mince words about how he feels about the incident while mentioning the deaths of Kellachan and Harrington in neighbouring Whitby.

"This is the sixth derailment in Durham Region since 2004," he says. "The two in Pickering, one was in 2007, where there was a derailment to the east of the GO station and we had to fight with CN to reimburse us with the municipal cost for the hazmat people and the fire department, and so on, and here we are again in March 2010, three years to the month.

"I don't believe it's a design flaw," he says. "The rail system has worked well for decades."
But Ryan says there's "a lack of interest" among railway companies in dealing with concerns from the municipalities.

"The point here, I believe the minister of transport ... needs to bring this industry to heel," he says. "I guess the parallel would be the crisis we had a few years ago ... with the trucking industry when the wheels came flying off."

The real issue is the potential loss of life, and damage to property and the environment, Ryan says.
The relationship between the city and the rail companies isn't good, he says.

As a bellwether, Ryans cites the city's fight against graffiti.

"We got a file of letters that go unanswered for two or three years about graffiti problems along the rail corridor," Ryan says. "They just have a total disdain for any needs other than their own, which is to move freight from Point A to Point B."

CN spokesman Mark Hallman says his company works hard to build bridges with communities across the country.

"I can't explain (Ryan's) position, but certainly that we take active steps, we ... do make regular contact with local officials," he says.

Durham Regional Chairman Roger Anderson says he's got two issues: The number of accidents and the lack of reporting.

"One can only assume it's the tracks unless we hear otherwise," he says.

"Most of the trains run through very urbanized areas in Durham and the train wreck Tuesday came very, very close -- and I mean close -- to the GO Train station," Anderson says.

"I think we were really lucky. Really, really lucky that there wasn't a GO train coming into the station or leaving at the time of that accident," he says.

The meeting that Ryan is having with Ottawa is a start, Anderson says, but he's urging the provincial and federal governments "to get their heads around maintenance and reporting and the (companies) have to do a complete look at all their rail going through Durham.

"Six accidents in six years is just not acceptable, period," he says. "Some of them were not small. When is enough, enough?"

The rail companies have to report to the public about the state of their equipment, Anderson says.
"Derailments may be down, but I can guarantee you they're up a couple of hundred per cent in Durham," he says. "They're paying attention somewhere, but they're not paying attention in Durham."
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Rail Association of Canada operations vice-president Mike Lowenger says the country's rail industry has never been safer.

Since a review of the Railway Safety Act in 2007, Transport Canada put up money to increase the number of safety investigators starting this year.

The Canadian Fire Chiefs Association expressed concern at that review about lessening government involvement regulations in safety.

RAC director of regulatory affairs Kevin McKinnon says the safety management systems used by railways overlay historical safety regulations, and government regulators still keep an eye on the companies.

"They still do inspections," he says. "If anything, there's been an increase (in safety protocols) in the last few years.

"Traditionally, it was all inspections. Go out, see the line, talk with the people, that was your oversight," Lowenger adds. "See a problem, you fix it, you prosecute it, you issue an order. But today, it's a combination of that, and ... looking at everything railways produce, their own inspection reports and what they're getting."

Safety management systems, Lowenger says, allow companies to "manage our safety the way we think is the best."

Railways operate about 775 freight and passenger trains a day in Canada. CN runs about 40 freight trains through Toronto a day.

"If there are systemic reasons, if it's infrastructure failures, if rails are failing, or ties are bad, or something, that's an area companies are looking at to improve," Lowenger says. "If it's equipment problems, wheels are falling off ... or so on, we have a lot of technology out there to prevent that from happening, but occasionally, it happens.

"There are millions of axles out there every day, moving," he says.

Most of the accidents involving trains are what Lowenger calls "flat tire" incidents. In other words, they're minor incidents.

"It's a lot safer on our railways than on our highways," says McKinnon. "We move two-thirds of the surface freight in Canada.

"That's a big job to move all that stuff around," Lowenger says.

"So is there going to be a time when something bad can happen? We try to aim for zero, but things happen. Can they be preventable? If it's something we can change and prevent, then we change our model, we change our processes, we get new equipment."

In the past decade, rail traffic increased by about 30% while incidents are "way down," McKinnon says.
The railways' goal is to be the safest industry. "It doesn't help you if you're out there to get business and you run an unsafe railway," Lowenger says.

Transportation Safety Board of Canada monthly railway occurrences statistics show there were five derailments in the country in February, half of the 10 in the same month last year. In January, there were six, compared to 15 during the same month in 2009.

In 2009, there were 68 derailments, while there were 129 in 2008. The average between 2004 and 2008 was 157.

CN's Hallman says the cause of Tuesday's main track accident remains unknown. The Pickering derailment of 2007 was caused by a broken rail switch, he says.

"In response, CN has improved its ultrasonic testing of switches," Hallman says. The testing allows crews to spot flaws not visible to the eye.

"We do ultrasonic testing across our network, but in particular we improved our testing on switches."
CN's safety record has improved, Hallman says.

"Our main track accidents year-to-date through 2010 are down 70% from a comparable period of 2009," he says. "And in 2009, we had a reduction of over 35% in the number of main-track accidents we recorded vs. 2008," Hallman says.

"So we believe the trend is going in the right direction."

He says, however, there's nothing unusual happening in Durham.

"We see no service or trend issue," Hallman says. "In general, no, we don't see any particular issue with this area."

ROB.LAMBERTI@SUNMEDIA.CA