Canadian Railroads > Derailments in Alberta

high winds and trains blowing over.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/train-derailment-red-deer-three-hills-1.4359648

I heard of one near Lethbridge as well. South Western Alberta is more known for high winds. Fires in Eastern Alberta have been growing in these winds as well.

Rick

CP had an incident in the Lethbridge incident when a cut of storage cars pushed by the wind. The cars ended up blocking a highway crossing. I believe this was on the Turin spur.

CN had 2 incidents in Alberta due to high winds, the first on the Wainwright Sub near the town of the same name. An intermodal had a portion of the tail end of the train blown off of the Fabyan Trestle. This sub is part of the road's Vancouver to Montreal mainline, there are currently 10 trains lined up to detour over the "Prairie North Line" between Edmonton and Saskatoon SK.

The second CN incident again involved an intermodal train on the road's Three Hills sub running between Edmonton and Calgary. A cut of double stacks were blown over by high winds near the community of Huxley.

-Trevor



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/17 08:25 by tsokolan.

There are some great photos on the cbc edmonton regional web site sorry but my phone will not let me insert the link

Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/17 10:17 by dxm332.

Who will be the first to blame this on Hunter Harrison??

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

There has been lots of intermodal blow overs. I wonder if the height of the top corner guides could be raised, say a foot, and help eliminate the top containers from being blown over? Just a thought.

aronco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Who will be the first to blame this on Hunter
> Harrison??
>
> Norm

Nah, could not be Hunter, he was just a big blow hard, not now with the oxygen tank attached.

Noticed the oxygen on EHH when he was on TV. What is his ailment?

tsokolan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> CP had an incident in the Lethbridge incident when
> a cut of storage cars pushed by the wind. The cars
> ended up blocking a highway crossing. I believe
> this was on the Turin spur.
>
> CN had 2 incidents in Alberta due to high winds,
> the first on the Wainwright Sub near the town of
> the same name. An intermodal had a portion of the
> tail end of the train blown off of the Fabyan
> Trestle. This sub is part of the road's Vancouver
> to Montreal mainline, there are currently 10
> trains lined up to detour over the "Prairie North
> Line" between Edmonton and Saskatoon SK.
>
> The second CN incident again involved an
> intermodal train on the road's Three Hills sub
> running between Edmonton and Calgary. A cut of
> double stacks were blown over by high winds near
> the community of Huxley.
>
> -Trevor

Last summer I shot Fabyan trestle, and saw something on the bridge that was not there in 2009, when I first shot the location. In the attached photo, you'll see a long, thin, white instrument attached to and hanging down from the deck; it's between the sixth and seventh cars in the train, and between the fifth and sixth bents this side of the centre span. It is apparently a device for measuring wind shear or wind speed, and I was given to understand that above some threshold, something's supposed to happen (slow order, or no train movements at all). It evidently was not an effective measure yesterday. Does anyone have any more information about how this is supposed to inform someone of excess wind, and what action is supposed to be taken? By the way, this is June 29, 2016, and 5711 plus 5759 are tiptoeing across with #191 at 1138. Lens set at 55 mm. It is one long way doooooowwwwwwwnnnnnnn for anything that would blow off the rails.
Fred

---

Eastbound last year on Train 8, Empire Builder there were significant winds. This was near Browning, MT where it can be often windy. The train stopped often. On the scanner I heard that the stop was so engineer could take a wind reading with--I forget the name of the he device. As long as the wind was above, I think it was 30 MPH, the train had to proceed at restricted speed. By Shelby, the winds had subsided and we proceeded at track speed. But the point is that attention was paid to wind speed. And those who travel this route would know that there are wind protection fences along the track near Browning, MT

If I got "ripped a new one" by the Supt. for having a rested crew with light power lift 100 released grain loads when grain was hot a few years ago (so much so the "Farmers lobby" had convinced the politicians to levy fines to the RRs if we didn't move enough to tidewater, but I digress...) the dummies who didn't heed the copious available wind warnings on this should be shown the door...