Railcars stand idle at the Canadian National (CN) rail yards in Edmonton February 22, 2015DAN RIEDLHUBER/Reuters
The country's transportation watchdog is investigating a collision involving a runaway train at Canadian National Railway Co.'s rail yard north of Toronto.
The Transportation Safety Board says a section of rail cars became uncoupled from a locomotive that was backing up at CN's MacMillan yard and travelled an unspecified distance before colliding with an incoming train on Wednesday.
CN said the runaway string contained 91 cars, and the collision happened at low speed. Nine cars derailed and two others on an adjacent track were damaged.
"There were no injuries, and no freight cars left the yard, which has mechanical devices to prevent any such movements exiting the terminal," the company said in an e-mailed statement. "CN is probing the incident and is co-operating fully with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada's investigation."
The TSB has dispatched two investigators to the scene, and said no further details were available at the time.
Railway regulators in Canada and the United States on Wednesday finalized rules on securing trains, part of the response to the 2013 tragedy in Lac-Mégantic, Que., where a runaway oil train exploded and killed 47 people.
CN's safety record has come under government scrutiny this year after three oil train crashes in Northern Ontario during the late winter. Two derailments, near the town of Gogama, involved major spills and fires. In April, a CN conductor was killed while working in a Saskatoon rail yard.
A Reuters report this year showed the company's mainline derailments rose 73 per cent in 2014 to 57.
The Montreal-based company's board of directors cited a rise in crashes and employee injuries when it withheld a small portion of the 2014 bonus paid to Claude Mongeau, chief executive officer. However, his total compensation rose 14 per cent to $9.3-million.
Eric Atkins