WorkSafeBC report cites safety failures in derailment that killed 3 workers
Decaying railroad ties and the failure of a safety mechanism to prevent a train derailment are cited in a report by British Columbia’s workers’ safety agency as factors in a crash that killed three people and injured two others.
The accident in April 2017 happened on the now-abandoned Western Forest Products rail line at Woss, a community of about 200 residents on Vancouver Island. The railway, known as the Englewood Railway at the time, was the last operating lumber railway in North America.
The WorkSafeBC report says 12 rail cars loaded with logs were being moved when 11 of them suddenly began to roll freely with the force of gravity.
The failure of a so-called “derail” device to stop the runaway cars caused them to crash into five members of a work crew who were either on a rail backhoe or in a “speeder” vehicle, a self-propelled rail car used to transport workers and equipment from location to location along the line.