Don't sweat it. CN will be given a pat on the back and sent out to try and get you again...real soon....

DOES CN RUN REMOTE CONTROLLED SWITCHERS IN QUESNEL LIKE P.G.? CHECK IT OUT? SCAREY SITUATION WHEN THERE ARE NO EYES OR EARS ON THE FRONT END OF A MEGA TON TRAIN.

There have been more deraillments this year than last year.

Let me suggest that politicians ask this question of CN:

How many deraillments should there be?

How many car accidents should their be. How may coal mines accidents. How many Airline crashes. Who knows? The simple answer is none, however the truth of the matter is, is that accidents happen all the time. There were more people killed in the workplace in BC than there ever was from Rail Accidents.

The focus has to be on safety and safety rules. These rules have been in place for years and there is a set procedure to be followed every time there is a rail accident. If the TSB, the Government, and the Railways would excercise due diligence then accidents would be reduced but never eliminated.

As a matter of interest if all the rules and regulations governing Rilways were applied and adhered to the Railways would grind to a halt. In fact when there is labour difficulties between the Unions and the Railway, the Unions have in the past **Worked to Rule** which is essence brings the rail operation to its knees. Working to rule has I beleive been considered by the Labour Relations Board to be a form of strike, and therefore cannot be used without a vote by the Union members. (I could be wrong). In any event there has to be a balance between safety and the ability to operate.

The fact that there have been a few derailments in the Greater Prince George area, has people running around crying **The sky is falling, the sky is falling**. When in fact if you look at the number of accidents across Canada it is probably much the same as in the past.

Safety has to be number one, and the exercise of due diligence, after that you go to work. We have all the legislation we need to keep the Railways in line, however I dont beleive that the Government has the people on the payroll to see that they comply.

Palopu, since deregulation CN governs itself. It forced Transport Canada to keep silent about its safety audit, remember?

Asset utilization is job one with safety around number four.

We used to go to rules class for a week every two years, taught by professionals who knew their stuff, now it's four hours every three years "mentored" by a supervisor who may never have worked on the rails.
New hires are herded through training in a couple of months and made conductors. It took us two years for that, a year and a half to be yard foremen.
I never said the sky is falling; I said the standards are slipping.

For CN, its all about the bottom line. They couldn't care less if they have derailments. Derailments are part of "doing business".
Worker morale is down to the lowest level ever, and has been for 5=6=7 years. CN is quite happy with the number of derailments they have,when compared to the number they DON'T have.
Hang on to your hats. It'll get worse.

I agree that standards are slipping, however as you say this is because of Management, and the lack of action by the Government. This is where the problem lies.

I dont expect the Government to do anything at this point in time, mainly because Government in this Country has basically disappeared.

We know that talking to our local MLA's or MP's basically get us nowhere. We get the usual **I will get back to you** or the preprinted response.

Government across the country is fractured, and they seem to spend all their time collecting taxes and then giving the money back through various and sundry operations, that give people the impression that they are doing something.

Citizens of this Country are just as bad as the Government that represents them. They continually have their hand out for money for different programs, a lot of which can only be described as stupid.

They supported the Liberal Government when it brought in the Gun Registry, and therefore were complicite in the wasting of Millions, if not Billions of tax dollars. They continue to do this type of thing on a daily basis, and the Government goes along with them.

If the Government is not responsible, and the taxpayers who elect them are not responsible, then how can you expect to get anything of consequence done??.

It seems to me that people in this Country are running around in circles bumping into each other, much like the Mad Hatter. The Goverments of the day are a bunch of lost souls wandering through the Parliament buildings like zombies through a foggy graveyard.

We dont seem to have one person that stands out as a leader, that could get the Government back on track, and use the available money to support the infrastructure of the Country and the basics like Highways, Military, Foreign Affairs, Education, and Health, and Law Enforcement. After that any money left over should be returned to the taxpayers to be spent rather than doled out by hairbrained politicians, for hairbrained ideas.

Take away the money from the Politicians and they will have nothing left to do but work, which when you think about it is what we voted them in for in the first place.

All of the stringlining incidents and the runaway yard movement in Prince George can be directly attributed to CN throwing out the General Operating Instructions (GOI)that the former BC Rail had in effect prior to the lease of BC Rail to CN.
The stringlining of these trains(this is the third one between PG and Quesnel in two years)is caused by improperly marshalled trains period.You can't put empty cars on the head end and loaded cars on the tailend when you have to deal with the grade and curvature of the tracks on BC Rail.
BC Rail ALWAYS put loads ahead of emptys and never once had a train stringline.
These three on the Prince George Subdivision all happened with a track speed of less than five miles per hour.
The answer is simple if you want trains to run on former BC Rail trackage safely you have to bring back the regulations that the former BCR ran under for decades.
But we all know that will never happen because it would cost money and CN only made two billion dollars last year.And of coarse it would be admitting that the former BCR had more knowledge of running trains on mountain grade than the CN and that would be too much for CEO E.Hunter Harrisons ego to handle!!!

I've seen a lot of tonnage profiles whose graphs resemble the outline of a sway-back horse. Loads on the head end, loads on the tail end, lots of empties in the middle.
Yardmasters and trainmasters on CN used to ship consists like that back to the yard for remarshalling, but not these days.

The tail end of the train decelerates slower than the head end, especially with the new fuel-saving braking procedures, in which you are not allowed to stretch the train with power as you brake. A large block of heavy cars running into the head end can cause a deraillment, more so if the cars in the middle of the train are light.
I respect the fuel savings, a lot, but with a bit of power and a minimum brake application te force of the run-ins was greatly reduced.

coastb, were the trains under draught when they stringlined? I was talking about buff forces in my previous post.

Sounds like they must have been. (Duh my bad.)
I worked as a trainman in B. C. some years ago, and I saw how those tracks turn right back on themselves, so that you think you see a train on the track beside yours going in the opposite direction, and it's your own train's tail end.
Keeping a train that's marshalled loads on the tail end in draught, all stretched out, whether ascending or descending is going to be difficult. You are pulling one way while the tail end rolls the other way... no surprise the curves take a beating.

I'm thinking... it takes me quite a while... I'd run shorter trains, unless I was short of power.
Why is CN short of power again?