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Is CN Rail Ignoring the BC Rail Operating Experience?

By Peter Ewart

By Peter Ewart

As the investigations continue into the derailment of a CN train and subsequent spill of tens of thousands of litres of the highly corrosive chemical, sodium hydroxide, into the Cheakaumus River (North of Vancouver), CN and government officials are making statements that appear to be contradictory. In the meantime, workers and union representatives are concerned that CN Rail may be ignoring the operating experience of BC Rail (which it acquired from the BC government in 2003).

When asked whether the derailment of the CN train had anything to do with the length of the train, Graham Dallas, spokesperson for CN Rail, flatly dismissed this explanation, which had been raised as a possibility by union officials and former employees of BC Rail (Globe and Mail – Aug. 8).

At the time when Dallas made his statement, several investigations into the spill had just begun and were expected to take some months to complete. Indeed, in direct contradiction to Dallas’s comments, Len Lewar, the Transportation Safety Board investigator for the Federal Government, stated that, although the Board had not reached a conclusion yet, “the unions’ concerns about length and weight are ‘right on the money’” (Vancouver Sun – Aug. 10).

However, a few days later, Transport Canada spokesperson, Ruth Casey, made the claim that “there is no evidence the longer trains have any relationship to derailments” (Vancouver Sun – Aug. 19).

On August 22, when asked how, before investigations were completed, CN (or anyone else for that matter) could rule out train length as a factor in the derailment, Dallas replied that his earlier statement was in response to statements put forward by others that were “patently false” and that he was simply trying to clarify these incorrect statements. But Dallas did add the qualifier that CN was not trying to “pre-empt” any findings by the Transportation Safety Board, which is conducting an investigation of the derailment.

The Cheakamus derailment is certainly not standing in they way of CN’s announcement that it plans “to move an additional 125,000 containers a year” starting on Aug. 21. To accommodate the new containers, CN is adding on new trains between Toronto and Vancouver, and will be using the longer trains for the increased freight (Vancouver Sun – Aug. 19).

Some employees and union officials are concerned. Before it was sold to CN, BC Rail (which was a publicly-owned railway) and its employees built up a gold mine of operating experience navigating the mountain gorges, valleys and plains of the province’s Interior. Thus most people would expect that, when it acquired BC Rail, CN Rail would have made good use of BC Rail’s invaluable operating experience. But there is reason to believe that this may not be entirely the case.

Every month, railways in Canada distribute to their engineers, conductors and other employees a monthly “operating bulletin” which lays out the rules of operation that must be followed in running trains. This is an extremely important document in maintaining the safety and efficiency of all operations.

For example, the October 2001 Monthly Operating Bulletin for BC Rail (issued three years before it was sold to CN) lays out the rules governing “Conventional Train Operation on Ascending Grades.” This, of course, was the same kind of train that recently derailed into the Cheakamus River. In this section, the Bulletin states that each northward train must be limited to a “maximum” of 80 empty cars (amounting to a train of about a mile long). This is because empty cars have a tendency to derail under certain conditions, sometimes taking other cars with them.

CN Rail has now re-issued the “Operating Bulletin”, but there is a definite omission. In the August 2005 CN Bulletin, the BC Rail stipulation that there be only 80 cars for each train has been eliminated completely. Thus, in the CN derailment at Cheakamus, the train in question had 144 cars in it, for a train almost two miles in length. A whopping 141 of the 144 cars were empty (Globe and Mail – Aug. 8), 64 more than the BC Rail maximum.

Why did BC Rail, when it was operating independently, limit its northward trains to 80 empty cars? And why has CN, now operating on the same track, increased the number of empty cars dramatically to 140+? So far, these questions do not appear to have been clarified. Nor has it been clarified why there has been such a rash of derailments recently along CN’s rail lines in Western Canada (5 in the past month). For their part, union representatives are calling for a full investigation of CN’s operating and safety practices.

CN maintains that it has its own operating experience in British Columbia and elsewhere and that it uses long trains “day in and day out across [its] system”. But critics argue that the old BC Rail tracks are much steeper than the ones CN is used to, and that CN is taking a cavalier attitude towards the BC Rail operating and safety experience.

Some critics have also raised concerns that the tank car in the Cheakamus derailment may not have been properly placed in the train. According to both the BC Rail Bulletin of 2001 and the CN Bulletin of 2005 “loaded cars” (like the tank car that spilled sodium hydroxide) must be placed “immediately behind” or, “as close as possible” behind the lead engine. CN spokesperson Dallas disputes the critics and maintains that the tank car was “at the front” of the train and that there were no empty boxcars between it and the lead engines.

Despite the number of derailments that have taken place in BC and Alberta this month, it is clearly “full speed ahead” for CN and its long trains. But it also appears that not everyone is at ease with this.

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