Craig: Leaving the train at Stephen would block the north track all the way
from Lake Louise, and the south track is the one with the heavy grade against
westbounds. There had been a single crossover at Divide but it was removed in
the EHH era. It was facing the wrong way anyway, originally set up to enable
The Canadian to get to the platform at LLouise (south track) from either track
at Stephen. I did hear that there was talk recently of reinstalling the
crossover, possibly facing the opposite way to enable freights to overtake.
Therefore the only place to stage a westbound train before Partridge would have
been Eldon. Presumably at Eldon it was still expected the original crew would
reach Field within their hours. We will have to wait for the TSB report which
will probably list where and when the problems occurred.
The key question in my mind is who made the decision to only use retainers and
not hand brakes, which is likely on the tape of radio conversations. If not,
the original crew will know what instructions they may have received and from
whom. Again, the TSB investigators will have obtained that information and the
report may well include transcripts of some of the important parts of the radio
transmissions.
John On Wednesday, January 29, 2020, 04:29:49 p.m. MST, Craig Talbot
<talbotc@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Apparently the train had stopped for inspections twice between Calgary
and Partridge and had been having problems along the way - that was the
reason the crew ran out of hours before making it to Field. It will be
very interesting to see if the TSB is able to access all the
conversations between the Crew, Managers and RTC as the train went from
Calgary to Partridge.
I had wondered why the train was left at Partridge, not Stephen. At
least Stephen is flat(ish) and more accessible than Partridge. They are
only 5 miles apart, so no great advantage to going as far as Partridge
vs Stephen.
Craig
pbsmith@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Kris,
Yes, I watched it and there wasn't much there, however two interesting things
came up. First is that the CP Police investigator was not allowed access to
all witnesses or the audio recordings. That makes me wonder if the crew was
told to mot apply handbrakes on the train. Handbrakes should have saved the
day. Secondly, it was indicated that there was alleged to be trouble with the
air brakes on the aging ex Government grain car fleet. Certainly leaking
brakes could have been a cause of this accident.
I am very interested to know exactly what happened that night.
Paul Smith
Winnipeg
