22 June 2010

How One Albertan Managed to Avert
a Train Disaster

Washout starting...

Washout after...

A closer look at the washout.

Medicine Hat Alberta - When a section of the TransCanada railway fell into Ross Creek in Medicine Hat, Alberta, local retiree Ray John, 65, acted quickly to save a crew headed for certain death. He tells the Post's Drew Halfnight what happened. The destroyed section of railway is just part of the damage flooding has caused across southeastern Alberta.
 
Q:  How did you notice the danger?
 
A:  My family and I went for a walk down to see Ross Creek, which had swollen from about 15 metres to 100 metres wide in some places. I walked down onto the railway line to have a look with my binoculars and I thought, that doesn't look right down there. It doesn't look like it used to.
 
Q:  Were the rails already underwater at that point?
 
A:  No. At the time the railway was still intact, although the tracks were sagging because they were sitting on nothing but fresh air. About 20 metres of railway ties were actually hanging loose on the other side of an embankment.
 
Q:  How did you react?
 
A:  We phoned 911 and explained to the operator what was happening. I said if a train comes now, they're going to be in trouble. She said, Oh, you mean down on Shulton Hill? That's another area that had already been flooded. I said, No, we're about 2 1/2 kilometres east of Shulton Hill.
 
Q:  When did the train come into view?
 
A:  Just two minutes later, that's when I seen the train coming. Luckily I was wearing a very bright red shirt and I ran to a point halfway down the coolie [dip] and took off the shirt and started waving it around and shouting. The engineer who was driving the train was in the back and probably couldn't see where he was headed. They had about 100 metres to go before they hit this blind bend, and they'd have been in the water.
 
Q:  How was the train able to stop?
 
A:  It was going slow, thank goodness, because it was carrying these trucks full of ballast to fix the lines further down. Once one truck had started into the water, it would have pulled the rest in, I'm sure. But finally it stopped, the crew got off and walked to about 15 yards from where the hole was.
 
Q:  And if you hadn't been there?
 
A:  It would have been a nasty sight to see, I'm sure. The tracks were hanging loose about 25 feet above the water at that point.
 
Q:  Did you get a thank you from the crew?
 
A:  We didn't get a chance to speak to them. We had to run because we had a table booked in half an hour.
 
Drew Halfnight.