An once again because CN says everything is ok it will be ignored.
Maybe they should put rubber wheels on the trains and see if they can do better.

The public should be notified it was grain cars. 2:30 PM is kinda late to be rushing down with empty cereal bowls, I guess.

CN is just feeding the pigeons.

mishap???????? accident?????? incident?????
derailment???

what's in a word????

Still practicing I see ..... maybe it's the new person who took over from the old person who was responsible for the derailment that caused a big fireball.

Good help is just so difficult to get.

How do grain cars just fall on their sides? Were they being loaded and became unbalanced? Or, was there a problem with the rail bed? Or, was there a switching problem? Or was it human error? Will someone who works on the railroad please explain how these cars just fall off the tracks? Chester

It is not easy ..... turning a grain car on its side takes a lot of training .....

;-)

I think that CN should look at elevating their tracks .... derailments would be reduced considerably!!!!

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=232656466&size=m

;-)

When leaving the city council meeting about the derailments, I had the opportunity to say to Jim Vena to be careful not to trip on the way out of the Hall. I guess this bit of irony was lost on him as here we are again.

How far apart are the rails? About four feet? The cars must be about 9 feet wide or more, and about 20 feet tall.
Seems to me there is a balance problem, these rail cars must be really tippy at the best of times.
Clearly city council has to set new standards for rails cars entering PG. Any car entering PG must be on ten foot wide tracks so they are more stable and less prone to falling over.

"Designed by Eugen Langen, who originally planned to build it in Berlin, it was built in 1900, opened in 1901 and is still in use today as a local transport system in the city. It is the oldest monorail system in the world."

Owl, your picture shows the Monorail in Wuppertal, Germany.

Didn't some Swedish firm suggest a monorail system for B.C. in the Sixties...Wenner Gren, or something like that?

"How far apart are the rails? About four feet? The cars must be about 9 feet wide or more, and about 20 feet tall."

Just wait until the container trains arrive with double high stacked containers! They will be falling off and floating down to Vancouver in the Fraser River for sure!

;-)

The tracks are just under 5 feet wide. The key is where is the centre of gravity of the car. Standing still, it should be midway between the rails unless the load is decentralized which, in a grain car, should not be the case. In a box car, the side might hang about 2 feet over the rail and it would actually be possible to load it with heavy goods against one of the walls to the extent that the car could tip standing still.

The centre of gravity starts to shift as the car begins to move in a circular fashion and gets worse as the speed increases. It will move to the outside rail.

Those are not conditions which exist in the first avenue yard. The tipping must have occurred for other reasons, such as an impact or force along the length of the track which counteracted another force which would cause the cars to "lift off" the tracks and tip.

So, if the group was pushed on one end, and the brakes were applied in the last car on the other end of the train or the last car hit a stable object, the cars could have tipped.

Based on the physics of it, that is the only way that comes to mind at the moment.

Diplomat – I have not heard of the proposal for BC.

I think the main reason the one in Wuppertal is still in use is because Wuppertal (meaning “Wupper” valley, where Wupper is the name of the river) is a linear city built along the river with commercial buildings along the river’s edge and housing going up the relatively steep sidehills. The river provided the ideal rapid transit opportunity if one is not concerned about aesthetics.

While much of land adjacent to the river is highly urbanized, the rest of the city, as one moves up the hillsides, is quite green. I have been there several times. My father was born there.

Since Vancouver is one of several cities that has an elevated rapid transit system, Vancouverites would know what it looks and feels like to live near an elevated system.

When will it be hazards goods spilling? Do you think there will be any more action then?
What is City Council's responsibility in all this?

"Among Wenner-Gren's other interests were monorail train systems. His company, ALWEG, built the original Disneyland Monorail System in 1959 and the Seattle Center Monorail in 1962. Wenner-Gren continued his fascination with spurious railway projects, as he collaborated with Canadian W.A.C. Bennett to build a railway north from Prince George into the untapped Peace River, Rocky Mountain Trench and eventually Alaska."

"Diplomat – I have not heard of the proposal for BC."

Apparently the high speed ALWEG monorail proposal for B.C. was a newspaper headline story during the late 1950's.

Cheers!

It was grain, but it could have been Hydrogen Sulphide for that matter....and people would be lying dead in downtown PG. I wish CN could just roll up their tracks and MOVE!

Tracks five feet apart? Hey pal. This is metric country. As for grain cars falling over, maybe the milk inside shifted. Were they filled with Honey Nut Cheerios? Inquiring minds wanna know.

Hydrogen Sulphide? People in downtown P.G. dead? Ha ha ha . IMO very few people venture downtown. I don't see a problem. Now if there was a derailment near Pine Center or near Westgate, then I would worry. Downtown? Only bad news there fer the bums if there was a mishap.

dpdiggler right on!
Harbinger you are forgetting all the people who live west of Winnipeg Street and who adjoin the tracks - there are lots of them.

West of Winnipeg Street is considered downtown? Hmmmm? Bummer!

Not downtown but the residents West of Winnipeg Street to the West end of the City are just as important as those around Pine Centre or near Westgate.