CN wants to bury train wreck#### Last Updated: Friday, July 14, 2006 | 9:01 AM PT##### CBC News
CN Rail has applied for permission to bury what’s left of a locomotive and rail car at the site of a fatal derailment near Lillooet in the B.C. Interior.
Two crew members were killed when the engine plunged off the track and went down a steep mountain slope two weeks ago.
(CBC)
Rick Wagner of the B.C. Ministry of Environment said the government is considering CN’s proposal to bury the wreckage where it lies.
He said pulling the train out may not be a viable option, as lifting the locomotive up the steep bank would be too dangerous and there are environmental concerns about building a road from below.
But he said the burial proposal carries its own risks.
"There would be the need to move equipment down the bank in a safe manner to actually open up a hole, and then move the locomotive into it and then bury it over.
“So it’s definitely a difficult process whatever they choose to do.”
Wagner said he wants to ensure there are no oil, diesel and battery acid left on the engine before granting approval, but notes that the toxic fluids appear to have been burned off in the fire.
If the company can verify that there would be no environmental threat, Wagner will likely take the unusual step of approving the train burial within two or three weeks, he said.
The bodies of the two crew members — Tom Dodd and Don Faulkner — were recovered after the crash.
Not all that unusual. I know of an SP wreck where several cars were burried. Several years later they were dug up and removed. I also head about a UP wreck that involved a boxcar full of guns. The car was burried for fear the guns would be looted. The car was eventually dug up and removed too.
Holy Cow thats a hellova place for loco to end up…
I guess they can’t take it down to the bottom without it splashing in the river? Is that a problem?
Then where are they going to bury it? hard to bury something on a cliff face.
It seems to me they should just clean it of environmental hazards and leave it be. or as stated above, break out the torches and start at the back and take it up piece by piece.
That is such a sad picture. I can’t even begin to imagine the absolute terror that must’ve gripped the crew in their last moments. Their families are certainly in my prayers. Hope that CN can get the thing buried. It only seems fitting for such an accident.
Derailment debris that ends up in inaccessable places is frequently ‘buried’ in place as the cost of retrieving it far exceeds any scrap value that can be received for the debris.
If this is what I’m thinking of, the case was a bit different…it ran onto a burning trestle, fell through, and was buried to help stabalise the slope, which wasn’t quite as steep…
Wamsutter Wy, A WHOLE tank car full of Peanut oil is buried after a derailment.
Baxter Wy, A few autoracks and many BRAND NEW Dodge Ram Pickups are buried after a derailment in the mid 90s.
Up Willamette Pass, between Frazier and Cruzatte, there are lots of cars over the side. “From rust they came, to rust they shall return”. I don’t ever remember any being covered except the ones that went down the hill as part of a slide. For many years, starting about 1958 or 1959, the SP just let the wreckage lie where ever. In the mid-1970’s, they started to clean the messes up.
High-line loggers are pretty good wreck removers. Just above Lakehead (Shasta Lake) about 1960 or so, the SP put the Advance Starpacer (#376)(later known as the LABRF) clean out into the middle of the Sacramento River. Three units were not even reachable by the Relief Outfit (wrecking crew). A local high-line logger came by and asked how much would they pay him to snake the units out of the river. The price was definately music to his ears, so in a few hours he had rigged a high-line and within 24 hours had all three F-7’s out on dry land.
Around the same time frame, the SPS put several FA’s into the Deschutes River near Maupin. To recover the crews bodies, they needed to pull the units up a 60 foot cut face in the rock — along came the high-liners to the rescue.
Couldn’t they get a crane and drag it back up the slope or even an Army chinook or something? it would be hard to bury that on the side of that hill IMO.
Burying wreckage from train wrecks used to be a pretty common practice. In the time when wreck equipment at the site of the wreck was a large Brownhoist railroad crane or several small cranes, and maybe some bulldozers.Railroads did their own remediation on wrecks and repairs. It was fast and dirty. Push the junk into a trench, and walk the heavy tracks over it and then burry it, This was before environmental awareness and R.J. Corman and Hulcher and other recovery specialists were really active and on-call to respond to wreck scenes.
Just west of Southhaven, Ms, in the early sixties was a wreck involving carloads of Booze and a carload of Browning Guns. Then up around Walnut Ridge, Ark, the MoPac buried a number of loaded auto racks. The story in both cases was that it was easier to claim a 100% loss than fool around with trying to work out the salvage.
