• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Unions Want Federal Inquiry into CN After Series of Derailments

Posted on: Sunday, 28 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

EDMONTON (CP) - It has been a month of high-profile train derailments for Canadian National.

The company insists its safety record is top-notch. Its unions are calling for a federal inquiry to look at the issues of safety and staff cutbacks.

"One of the concerns that our membership raises is that there is the deferred maintenance. The question is that there's been downsizing over the years," said Ken Neumann, national director for the United Steelworkers, which represents 3,500 CN track maintenance workers.

"We need to get to the bottom of it. You've had a series of derailments which put communities and workers at risk."

Unions representing the rail line's employees want the federal government to call an inquiry that would look into the company's practices to see whether the series of derailments are coincidence or cause for greater concern.

"We want the minister (of transport) to explore the possibility the derailments are related to decreased maintenance, inspection and repair," said Bruce Willows of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, which represents about 900 CN locomotive engineers.

CN spokesman Graham Dallas said the company is constantly inspecting and maintaining its railway lines, spending $800 million on its track last year compared with $700 million two years ago.

"As a railway we do experience some derailments. Every railway in North America does," Dallas said.

"Obviously we've had a bad month. Everybody is doing everything they can first of all to co-operate with the investigations underway by the Transportation Safety Board, and then once those are completed to act on those recommendations and to take necessary steps to ensure that those never happen again."

On Aug. 3, a 44-car train derailed along the north shore of Lake Wabamun, west of Edmonton. The derailment ruptured 12 of the cars, spilling about 730,000 litres of bunker C fuel oil and a potentially hazardous wood preservative along the shore and into the lake.

Two days later, a CN freight train headed for Prince George, B.C., derailed over the Cheakamus Canyon near Squamish, spilling more than 40,000 litres of highly corrosive sodium hydroxide into the river, killing thousands of fish and other wildlife.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is investigating both derailments.

In the Wabamun investigation, suspect pieces of track recovered from the area where the trains derailed have been sent to the board's Ottawa lab for metallurgical analysis, along with a piece of wheel from one of the derailed cars, said senior investigator Art Nordholm.

Environment Canada has said CN likely violated federal environmental legislation when its train cars derailed, and is collecting evidence to prepare a brief for the Department of Justice, which will make the final decision about charges.

In the Cheakamus Canyon investigation, the Transportation Safety Board has uncovered no track or equipment problems and is focusing instead on the operation of the train and its interaction with the track, said Dan Holbrook, acting director of investigations.

Two weeks after those derailments, a mudslide in the Fraser Canyon pushed three cars off the railway line 50 kilometres east of Boston Bar, B.C., after the crew stopped to remove rocks from the track.

And a man was killed when a CN freight train and a garbage truck collided at a crossing by a Dow Chemical plant near Fort Saskatchewan, northeast of Edmonton.

On Aug. 19, four cars from a 23-car CN train jumped the track south of Prince George, B.C. One car carried sodium chlorate, a chemical used in the pulp and paper industry, which leaked two shovelsful of the chemical.

Holbrook said that derailment was caused by a bearing that overheated on an axle of one of the railway cars.

CN has experienced 72 derailments on their main tracks so far this year compared with 49 in the same period last year, and almost as many as its year-end total of 75 in 2004. The average over the past five years is 64 per year.

Dallas said the company's business has increased since it took over B.C. Rail., and its ratio of accidents compared to the distance travelled and volume moved is lower than the Canadian railway average.

"If you're going to move more traffic and more trains over more miles, then you would expect your ratio to remain the same. Our ratio has actually improved. It's certainly better than the Canadian average," he said.

Transport Minister Jean Lapierre has asked his staff to conduct an audit of CN's maintenance and review its safety management systems, said spokeswoman Irene Marcheterre.

She said once that's completed, Lapierre will consider whether to take further action.

Source: Canadian Press

More News in this Category