10 April 2006
Countdown to a Train Tragedy
Kathleen Kellachan and her niece Christine Harrington were still at work at the first indication
there was a problem with the freight train that would kill them.
A detailed accident report from the Transportation Safety Board is expected this week, outlining the confluence of events - of cold
weather, a faulty wheel and communications issues - that led to the deaths of Kellachan and Harrington on 14 Jan 2004.
But interviews with the family, the lead investigator and a freedom of information request show how Canadian Pacific Railway's safety
protocols may have played a role in the deaths.
It was 3:55 p.m. on that frigid winter day when a slowly breaking steel wheel on the 40-car train slashed and broke the
rail near Colborne, some 20 kilometres west of Trenton, Ont.
An electronic sensor inside the rail alerted CPR's traffic control centre in Montreal to the problem. A repair crew was dispatched to
fix the rail while the train, which began the fateful leg of its journey in Trenton, continued its slow-moving trek toward
Toronto.
Meanwhile, Harrington, 19, and Kellachan, 36, were wrapping up their day at Novopharm, a pharmaceutical company in Scarborough.
Harrington was about to quit her cafeteria job.
She had decided the bad weather made it too dangerous to drive home to her son Nolan, 3, and parents in Keswick. Instead, she'd stay at
her grandparents' house in Whitby, where Kellachan, 36, also lived.
By 7 p.m., Harrington had convinced her aunt to go shopping at the Wal-Mart, a five-minute trip up Garden St.
But they couldn't convince Moira Kellachan, the family matriarch, to join them. Moira tried but failed to convince the two to stay home
because of the weather.
At 7:08 p.m., Montreal got a signal that its steel rail had cracked again, near Newcastle, some 80 kilometres east of Toronto. The crew
that had just fixed the first broken rail was dispatched to fix the second. The third warning hit at 7:31 p.m. near Courtice. Sensors
picked up more broken rail. The repair crew foreman was suspicious. Three broken rails in the wake of the same train? There was more
than the cold at work.
The women were wrapping up at the mall. They expected to be home by 8 so Harrington could call Nolan to say "goodnight." There
would be no call.
At 7:55 p.m., their van was heading along Garden St. toward an overpass. The train, travelling at 80 km/h, was also approaching, its
broken wheel slashing at the rail. Two long train cars derailed just before the overpass. Fourteen cargo containers tumbled onto Garden
St. One, filled with whisky, crushed the van. Kellachan and Harrington were killed instantly.
"It all came together within minutes of the derailment time," said Tom Griffith, the senior Transportation Safety Board
investigator who led the accident probe. "The... person in charge of track repair made the connection: "That's too many.
Even the cold weather cannot cause that much. There could be something wrong with that train. Stop the train."
In the time it took to pick up the phone, the train derailed.
During its investigation, the safety board found three major breaks in the rail, four minor breaks and a series of smaller nicks -
indicative of a problem with a wheel. The board also discovered CPR safety protocols actually prevented the crew from looking for a
reason, other than the cold, for track damage.
Had the crews actually walked the tracks, the documents suggest, they would have found more nicks to tip them off to a damaged wheel.
"Having this information in a timely manner may allow the railway to identify and remove faulty equipment from service before a
derailment occurs," wrote Ian Naish, director of rail investigations for the safety board, in a February 2004 letter to Transport
Canada.
His letter notes that CPR safety rules require "immediate reporting" of "damage to the track from flat wheels or... other
defect in rolling stock." But the rules don't require "maintenance crews to also conduct a site examination to determine the
likely cause of the damage."
Griffith told the Star the "crew on that train did exactly what they were supposed to do." They had no idea there was a broken
wheel, he said.
Now, Naish said, crews walk a broken rail, looking for nicks.
The Kellachan family sued CPR and settled out of court.
"CP didn't do enough to stop that accident from happening..." said Moira Kellachan. "If they had only stopped the train
sooner."
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