lead82
Senior Member
I would think they would. Why is there no information about the CN derailment?
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
EnviroTO
Senior Member
Lessons that should be learned but I'm not optimistic will be:
1. Incident response centre that operates 24/7 and can dispatch a rescue to all areas where VIA operates. This would require an action plan that outlines the course of action to be taken by location and time and ensure primary contacts and backup contacts.
2. Federal regulations and union policy should be flexible on work hours when stranded passengers are being rescued. It is unreasonable to have a bunch of night crews in the corridor when there are no night trains. The other alternative would be to operate night trains... this would require full recline seats which maybe be useful on the Atlantic as well.
3. The railways need to do a better job of maintaining their right of way. The right of way used to be cleared back to a distance that trees shouldn't have the opportunity to fall on trains.
4. We can't have Transport Canada trust CN and CP (or VIA) blindly like the FAA did Boeing. Transport Canada should investigate both of these incidents and have actions that CN and VIA need to produce evidence for that this will not happen again.
1. Incident response centre that operates 24/7 and can dispatch a rescue to all areas where VIA operates. This would require an action plan that outlines the course of action to be taken by location and time and ensure primary contacts and backup contacts.
2. Federal regulations and union policy should be flexible on work hours when stranded passengers are being rescued. It is unreasonable to have a bunch of night crews in the corridor when there are no night trains. The other alternative would be to operate night trains... this would require full recline seats which maybe be useful on the Atlantic as well.
3. The railways need to do a better job of maintaining their right of way. The right of way used to be cleared back to a distance that trees shouldn't have the opportunity to fall on trains.
4. We can't have Transport Canada trust CN and CP (or VIA) blindly like the FAA did Boeing. Transport Canada should investigate both of these incidents and have actions that CN and VIA need to produce evidence for that this will not happen again.
lenaitch
Senior Member
I'm not convinced incidents like this in conditions like this will have a major hit on VIA's reputation. It's not like the alternatives were faring any better.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
Train Derailment Grafton December 24, 2022:
Bordercollie
Senior Member
There should be crews on standby as long as trains are running. If the time it took for crews to be dispatched resulted in crews already been sent home for the night and it wasn't until the morning when the morning crew showed up did they dispatch then they should have dispatched crews sooner.
Just because it doesn't meet their schedule doesn't mean that you leave passengers stranded for 18 hours.
The priority should have been getting another train to rescue the stranded train and tow it to a station to let passengers off.
If not a VIA train then perhaps call CN to dispatch a locomotive to tow the disabled train. I'm sure they don't want it holding up the main line for 18 hours.
DSC
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I think the line was already blocked by the CN train derailment.
Bordercollie
Senior Member
crs1026
Superstar
^Transit properties have “spare board” positions where operators’ assignment is to wait in the lunchroom until handed an assignment. It works, because there are enough variables with dead buses, sick calls, and service disruptions that the “couch drivers” don’t actually sit idle to a degree that would be offensive to the taxpayer.
I’m not sure that VIA needs that degree of redundancy in its operation. But railroading seems to be an extreme case where (perhaps because operating workers are deployed irregularly in the routine moments, with no one having any consistency or predictability in hours) rail workers slide off the face of the planet at quitting time, and the inability to achieve call-ins prevents quick response to incidents.
If one compares to say municipal and provincial Hydro workers, one seldom hears that a blackout in bad weather is extended because the workers couldn’t be called in. I could cite plenty of situations where, when the power went out town-wide, such workers just headed to work on the assumption that they would be needed to get the lights back on (of course, their own power might have been off as well, so it was somewhat self-motivated…)
Back in the days of pagers (amazing how dated that now seems), as a management guy I was required as a condition of employment to carry a pager 24/7 on a 2 weeks on/4 weeks off rotation, with the requirement to be able to reach the plant within 90 minutes, fit for duty….. to hold a role in the plant’s emergency contol centre. There was a small stipend paid for this but that’s all.
To be balanced, I am aware of railway RTE’s who have spent this Christmas in a bunkhouse in an away terminal because this week’s weather forced freight operations to be suspended also…. no way to get them home. I’m not suggesting rail workers have it easy, but VIA sits in the middle of these working extremes with most of its crews working a predictable schedule such that the requirement to respond occasionally in emergencies is not unreasonable.
Someone needs to revisit this, because while the knee-jerk reaction of “it was a holiday, so nobody could be reached” may be indicative of current railway culture, it isn’t a valid norm for a service industry where service stoppages can put customers’ health and well being at risk…. nor is it a modal condition of employment in other regulated, unionised industries.
- Paul
I’m not sure that VIA needs that degree of redundancy in its operation. But railroading seems to be an extreme case where (perhaps because operating workers are deployed irregularly in the routine moments, with no one having any consistency or predictability in hours) rail workers slide off the face of the planet at quitting time, and the inability to achieve call-ins prevents quick response to incidents.
If one compares to say municipal and provincial Hydro workers, one seldom hears that a blackout in bad weather is extended because the workers couldn’t be called in. I could cite plenty of situations where, when the power went out town-wide, such workers just headed to work on the assumption that they would be needed to get the lights back on (of course, their own power might have been off as well, so it was somewhat self-motivated…)
Back in the days of pagers (amazing how dated that now seems), as a management guy I was required as a condition of employment to carry a pager 24/7 on a 2 weeks on/4 weeks off rotation, with the requirement to be able to reach the plant within 90 minutes, fit for duty….. to hold a role in the plant’s emergency contol centre. There was a small stipend paid for this but that’s all.
To be balanced, I am aware of railway RTE’s who have spent this Christmas in a bunkhouse in an away terminal because this week’s weather forced freight operations to be suspended also…. no way to get them home. I’m not suggesting rail workers have it easy, but VIA sits in the middle of these working extremes with most of its crews working a predictable schedule such that the requirement to respond occasionally in emergencies is not unreasonable.
Someone needs to revisit this, because while the knee-jerk reaction of “it was a holiday, so nobody could be reached” may be indicative of current railway culture, it isn’t a valid norm for a service industry where service stoppages can put customers’ health and well being at risk…. nor is it a modal condition of employment in other regulated, unionised industries.
- Paul
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Bordercollie
Senior Member
cplchanb
Senior Member
Agreed. Imagine there was a medical emergency aboard or it was a serious accident. Via and CN would be guilty of multiple counts of negligence causing injury or death.
dowlingm
Senior Member
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cplchanb
Senior Member
What time was the incident?
dowlingm
Senior Member
that’s assuming that there were enough unoccupied tracks for a rescue locomotive to reach the train, and engineers with enough hours to reach it from the locomotive starting point. This is the new modern railroad, not an era of yards in every hamlet and a switcher to service them, and engineers who weren’t already maxed out on fatigue to meet shareholder demands.
smallspy
Senior Member
The RTC can only identify a passenger train from a freight by its symbol, and alpha-numeric jumble of characters that shows up on their screen above the line that is indicated by the train with each block. On each screen, the occupied block(s) show up in pink versus light grey (regardless of train type), with other colours used to indicate other situations (block occupied due to track work, train in emergency, etc.).
So while yes, we all want them to prioritize passenger over freight the reality is that when the calls are coming in they don't actually know who is calling until they interpret what they are being told.
I believe that this is impossible without specially-made (or jury-rigged) equipment. The tanks require pumping to remove the waste, and much like the fuel tanks there are a series of contacts on the hose and outlet that need to connect and talk to each other before the process begins.
There is a Transport Canada rule that states that there needs to be additional water for X amount of time beyond a "scheduled trip" at a full load. I don't know what that X is, but I have always seen lots bottles of water around on my trips.
There is also a substantial amount of onboard clean water (although it is technically no longer "potable") on each car. This could also be used in theory, as it used to supply the onboard drinking water. I don't know the reasoning behind that change.
That really depends on how far the next station is, and whether the track beyond the siding was passable.
I'm still gathering all of the facts from that event, so I don't know the answers to it as yet.
Dan
Northern Light
Superstar
Thanks Dan! Insightful, as always!