Transportation Safety Board

Canada TSB Releases Watchlist 2022

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) on Oct. 26 released its Watchlist 2022, putting a “spotlight on key safety issues and actions needed to make Canada’s transportation system even safer.”

Mid-train distributed power remote locomotive, UP 5359, following the 2019 derailment of CP’s freight train 301-349 on the Laggan Subdivision, near Field, British Columbia. Source: TSB Report R19C0015.

CP Disputing TSB Accident Report

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) at a March 31 news conference released its investigation report of Canadian Pacific’s Feb. 4, 2019 train derailment on the Laggan Subdivision near Field, British Columbia. CP later in the day issued a strong statement, calling out “inaccuracies and misrepresentations” made at the conference and in the report.

Draft Key Failure Caused CN Derailment: TSB

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) has determined that a draft key (“cross key”) failure caused the Jan. 26, 2021 derailment of a CN freight train near Edmundston, N.B. TSB said investigation report R21M0002 “draws attention to the importance of reassessing the design and inspection frequency of critical rail components, such as [draft] keys, based on changes in railway operating conditions.”

Commentary

Consistency Conspicuous in its Absence

Have you every missed something so completely that you question your own connections to reality? Like maybe missing the year or more of notices and communications from the Federal Railroad Administration regarding its “Miscellaneous Amendments to Brake Systems Safety Standards and Codification of Waivers” (Docket FRA-2018-0093)?

Brake Defects Plague Canada’s Aging Grain Cars

Hard-to-detect braking system defects have rendered Canada’s aging fleet of grain hoppers a safety hazard, says a former director of derailment investigations for the country’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB), the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. NTSB. Ian Naish, who retired from the TSB in 2009, in a CBC interview posted May 15, declared, “The grain car fleet overall is quite defective.”

New Speed Restrictions for Canadian Hazmat Trains

After the derailment of several trains hauling hazardous materials, namely crude oil, Transport Canada has issued new orders around the speed of these trains, which are now classified as “key trains” and “higher-risk key trains.”

TSB: Canadian railway accidents increase

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) released its preliminary transportation occurrence statistics for 2017. Total railway incidents were up, but still in line with five-year averages.