(The Canadian Press circulated the following story on December 8.)
VANCOUVER — CN Rail was ordered to limit the length of its trains to 80 cars on an old B.C. Rail line north of Vancouver on Wednesday after 11 derailments on that stretch of track this year.
B.C. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon said it is his hope that the order from the federal government will “lend confidence to the public” in CN’s operations in the province.
Transport Canada “is taking every possible cautionary decision in the interim until such time as the investigation is completed and we actually know the reason why these trains have been derailing,” said Falcon, who earlier spoke to his federal counterpart, Jean Lapierre.
The order comes after two derailments of CN trains in British Columbia on Monday, one of which was on the former B.C. Rail line near Squamish. That crash occurred when several empty cars left the tracks in the Cheakamus Canyon between Squamish and Whistler in a freight train of 125 cars.
CN spokesman Graham Dallas said the company had no comment on the new restrictions from Transport Canada on trains using the 200-kilometre stretch of line between Squamish and Clinton.
“We have just received (the order),” he said. “We are reviewing the notice and order and we have no further comment at this time.”
This is the second time that Transport Canada has issued an order limiting the length of CN trains through the mountainous stretch of track.
After the earlier derailments, the federal transportation ministry ordered CN (TSX:CNR) to restrict trains to 80 cars unless they had extra locomotives in the middle of the train.
The 125-car train that derailed on Monday was not in contravention of the earlier order because it had four locomotives at the front and two robotic locomotives in the middle. The new order restricts all trains to 80 cars regardless of their configuration.
Critics have pointed to the increasing length of trains since the B.C. Liberal government sold off the B.C. Rail operation to CN for $1 billion in 2003 as a possible cause of the derailments on the line.
The first accident on Monday happened on the route from Squamish where a tank car loaded with a caustic soda broke open after plunging into the Cheakamus River last summer, causing the death of thousands of fish.
The second derailment involved four cars of a 39-car train carrying new automobiles that derailed while crossing a swinging trestle over the Fraser River into the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby from an industrial area in neighbouring Richmond.
Transport Canada spokesman Rod Nelson said CN now will now have demonstrate it can operate safely if it wants to apply to increase capacity on the line.
“To reintroduce longer trains to that route they’ll have to provide us with an action plan on how they would do it and there will have to be some testing and we would work with them on that,” he said.
CN has defended its safety record as the best in North America, but it has come under greater scrutiny after a series of accidents this year in Western Canada.
The company’s worst accident this year spilled 700,000 litres of oil and potentially hazardous wood preservative into a Wabamum Lake near Edmonton on Aug. 3, two days before the Cheakamus River spill.
Besides facing a $28-million cleanup bill, CN suffered a public-relations black eye when it initially didn’t inform residents aiding the cleanup that the spill could be toxic.