(The following report appeared on the Parry Sound North Star website on July 29.)
ARDBEG, Ont. — Twelve of 47 cars on a Canadian National Railway train jumped the tracks about 15 kilometres from here. The cause of the derailment, near the remote community of Burton, isn’t known.
The derailment occurred at about 9:30 a.m. on July 25, and scattered 88 containers. The containers were filled with dangerous goods like paint and paint thinners, CN regional manager Ian Thomson said. The train was bound for Vancouver.
MOE ‘comfortable’
“The Ministry of the Environment folks have been to the scene, they are comfortable with everything that is going on,” said Mr. Thomson. “There were some dangerous commodities involved in the derailment, but none of them were compromised.”
The train was also carrying other items including games and toys.
CN staff and two divisions of Hulcher Re-railing, between 50 to 75 people, were at the scene by about late afternoon Sunday. One crew is working from the south and the other from the north.
“The material that can’t be re-railed, they’ll be moved off to the side to clear [the line] then they will bring in crews later to clean it up,” he said.
The tracks were expected to be passable by late Tuesday, July 27 and the derailment scene should completely cleaned up within a couple of weeks.
While the track was blocked CN trains took Canadian Pacific Railway line or were held back.
“We’re doing detours over CP, they are detouring around the Parry Sound area,” said Mr. Thomson. “Some trains we can hold up and others can be moved different ways, so basically we are continuing to move traffic.”
For the first six months of 2004 the number of reportable incidents, that is accidents which involved a dangerous commodity are down by about 35 percent from the same period last year, Mr. Thomson said.
“This is relatively rare,” he said. “Looking at our statistics overall, we’ve improved from last year. The fact there was a derailment is always a cause of concern, because we don’t want to have any.”