Summertime at the Station - August, 2024

On Friday, August 30 my good wife's good friend phoned to ask if she could drop by for a visit. I figured, well, here's three hours of chatting - good time to go trackside! I could not have known that the night's train traffic would be brought to a standstill. I headed out for the Kingston VIA station at 2000, returning home at 2300.

Around 2030 that evening, an incident occurred east of Kingston near Queens East at Mi 174 CN Kingston Subdivision, involving VIA No 54 (Venture Set 18, aka LUMI). Nothing was rolling eastbound or westbound through Kingston after 2020. 

As a result of the incident, five VIA trains were delayed. Based on 'transitdocs' train tracker data (below - screen capture map at midnight) on which the black background indicates train operating 1+ hour late, as well as VIA's own train status page, showing station stop OS's, I was able to come up with the following:

• VIA No 48: 3 mins late Napanee, 1 hr late Kingston, 2 hrs late Gananoque.
• VIA No 54: 10 mins late Napanee, 11 mins late Kingston, 2 hrs 30 mins late Brockville.
• VIA No 59: 40 mins late departing Ottawa, 48 mins late Brockville, 3 hrs late Kingston.
• VIA No 668: 30 mins late Oshawa, 30 mins late Kingston 2 hrs 45 mins late Cornwall.
• VIA No 669: on time Cornwall, 2 hr 14 mins late Kingston.

Arriving at the station after the obligatory Tim Hortons drive-thru visit, I often take an iPhone image of the expected trains from the in-station screen. Everything looked normal, that is, nearly every train was running late! We're good to go!

So early on, it seemed like just a normal night at Kingston station. In the large expanse of parking lot east of the station, two teens were riding around on their scooters. Sirens occasionally wailed on the Princess Street overpass just west of the station. VIA No 69 pulled in on the north track at 2010, and all six LRC cars looked full: 

910Love the way-3462-3460-3310Ren-3312R-3306R-3342.

Seven minutes later, VIA No 54 arrived on the south track, its unbanal banananess blaring LUMI, VIA's 18th Venture set! Locomotive 2218, cars ending in -18, cab car 2217. 

Departing, showing the put-me-together VIA logo's cleft palette between locomotive and first Business Class car:

Another eastbound was coming, although the signals at the east end of the station showed all red. Opposing traffic coming? VIA No 668 pulled in at 2047:

913L-3458-3326R-3324R-3309R.

I tried some iPhone night-time photography. I find the phone camera works well under two conditions: the subject isn't moving, and the photographer isn't moving. I used nearby light poles and sign posts to stabilize.

No 668 sat there, and sat there, and sat there. Nothing coming west, no change in the red signals. I walked to the west end of the train and noticed passengers on the south (Track 2) platform - on their phones, sitting, standing, talking, walking, smoking...various indications of idleness. This was my first 'hmmm...' moment -  something was amiss. As I walked back along the train, I noticed the cars' doors were open, and some passengers who had been sitting in their seats had disappeared from inside the train. This was my second indication. And it sat there...

Another snapshot of the pending trains on the in-station screen (below). The revised times seemed to be just pulled from thin air. I did overhear a ticket clerk on the phone, saying "Keep me posted".

First, I'd heard a bell from the west end of the platform. Then I knew two trains were going to be sitting in the station. At 2211, 2212 pulled in behind. By that, I mean at 10:11 p.m., Venture Set 13 pulled in as VIA No 48, stopping about 30 feet from the tail-end of No 668.

In the brightly-lit cab, I could see the head-end crew swapping seats for the remainder of the trip, whenever it was to begin. That was after bringing back two coffees from aboard No 668. Two views showing the proximity of the two perpetually-present peripatetic passenger trains:

Both trains were still there when I headed home at 2300. Before that, another pending train update (below) with the revised times leaning later and later. Apparently, VIA Nos 54 and 59 were on the move from the incident site shortly after I left. I don't know about delayed freight trains, but daylight-dodging denizens like CN No 148, 306, 377 et al were out there somewhere.

TRESPASSER FATALITIES

I have no indication of what the incident was at Queens East. Was it someone walking across or along the tracks and just not paying attention? All I can say with certainty, based on official sources, is that a trespasser stepped in front of the train at Mi 174 in front of VIA No 54 at 2024, and the incident was confirmed to be a fatality. Based on past experience, the complete blockage of both CN Kingston Subdivision main tracks and the extended delay to trains and passengers leads me to believe this was a trespasser fatality. I haven't had the misfortune on being on a VIA train involved in one, but I have been on a train behind one. Experience has shown that a non-fatal trespasser encounter (emergency and railway response) consumes about two hours, and a fatal encounter (emergency response, railway and coroner response) halts all traffic for about three hours.

VIA spokeswoman Mylene Belanger responded to reporters after such an incident, "Fatal collisions are often traumatic for the crew. As you may imagine, this is a very hard event for the engineer as he cannot stop the train as fast he would have hoped. [Freight] trains take up to two kilometres to fully stop, making it difficult for an engineer to avoid a collision."

Fifteen people have died at railway crossings across Canada in the past year, according to Operation Lifesaver. Even during the past week, Canada's Transportation Safety Board Rail Occurrence Database System lists three pedestrian fatalities. It's not always clear whether these are intentional or not. 

Locomotive engineers' traumatic experiences, and the impact of such events should already be well-known among the railway community. Fortunately, there has been an increased emphasis on the importance of mental health awareness in many workplaces, and the inevitability of such incidents usually results in the immediate replacement of the head-end crew. This is a major component of the hours of delay before resuming traffic after such an incident.

SUICIDE BY TRAIN

The psychosocial causes and impact of suicide by train are beyond the scope of this post. Notwithstanding the factors that lead to such incidents, one obvious outcome is the delay not only to the train involved, but all trains around. On the Friday night I was trackside, five VIA trains carrying hundreds, perhaps over a thousand passengers, and some freight trains were delayed. Imagine the extent of incident management that VIA and CN have to immediately engage in, not to mention unplanned changes to the passengers' travel plans and the effect of changes made on the fly. One person's actions affecting innumerable others.

On an average day, there are 12 suicides in Canada, for a yearly total of 4,500. Statistics posted by UQAM (pre-2009) showed an average of 43 suicides by train annually in Canada, of which only 5% involve a vehicle, although 43% of all rail accidents involve a vehicle. Rail suicide incidents are often close to where the victims live, and twice as many occur along open tracks compared to road crossings. While mental health issues are rare among accident victims, the majority of suicide victims have known mental health issues. Men account for 80% of suicides. Most accident victims are employed, while half of suicide victims are not. Suicide by train is counted within the 15% 'other' category of suicide reporting, at a far lower late than the three most prevalent categories comprising the 85%: suffocation, poisoning and firearms, comprising only 1.5% of all suicides.

The Canadian Psychiatric Association's Media Guidelines for Reporting on Suicide advocate against reporting excessive detail of suicides in the media. There has been documented contagion [copycat factor] when suicide details are broadcast, and the incidents' newsworthiness is often questionable. Living near several road overpasses over the CN Kingston Subdivision, I can attest to the fact that suicides by train go mostly unreported.

MOVING FORWARD

In our area, one initiative that's repeatedly and currently before Kingston city council calls for the city to pay millions of dollars for right-of-way fencing and other measures, thereby reducing trespasser access and enabling a CN and VIA whistling ban. Perhaps this includes self-harm barriers at the many road overpasses within city limits.

The night's rail traffic got flowing again, and I'm sure all involved, as well as those of you reading this post, hope it will never happen again.

 ANOTHER VIA STORY THIS WEEK...

A major media black-eye for VIA occurred on August 31, when passengers waiting at Quebec City for VIA No 39, which should have left at 1457 was still heading east as VIA No 622 marooned for several hours at Laurier-Station, QC on CN's Drummondville Subdivision. An expected three-hour trip became 14, with ten of those hours spent stationary. 

A Reddit post: '...this guy had a huge accident under the train trying to fix it and should have been at the hospital instead of being on the train trying to manage unruly passengers'. A video posted to social media showed a VIA engineer, in cab car 2309, grabbing a passenger's phone while he was recording the scene. The engineer had just effected a repair under the train, likely suffering a concussion, and was returning to the cab in the car-car. There being no outside door on the cab, he was subjected to passenger behaviour on his way through the car interior up the aisle to the cab door!

As if that wasn't bad enough, reports circulated that vodka and beer were served to passengers to placate them during the wait. A local fire department was reportedly called upon to assist in the transfer of passengers from No 622 to No 24 or 26 which then became a de facto No 39, expected to depart Quebec City at 2200. 

VIA had pizza and water delivered at 2030 for the stranded passengers, who had air-conditioning most of the time, wi-fi all of the time, and beverages and snacks until onboard stock ran out. Complaint: passengers on the trailing VIA No 24 only had pretzels! 

Federal Transport Minister Pablo Rodrigues met with VIA Rail officials this past week. This will likely lead to an investigation into all facets of the incident: customer service, operations, and mechanical issues with Venture Set 10. VIA maintained that no buses were available to effect transport to destination on the single-track CN line, and it will be interesting to see if VIA's political masters publish the investigation results. Will the earth move under VIA's feet? Oh, and the hard-luck rescue train was halted at Saint-Eugene, QC waiting for safety bridge inspections after the 4.6 magnitude earthquake near Drummondville!

Here's how railfans would remedy this terrible situation. (I am not making this stuff up!):

• VIA should position rescue locomotives (and tool cars!) at hubs like Kingston and Quebec City, presumably paying crews on 'hot standby'. There's also the issue of just which tracks these rescue consists would spend the majority of their time sitting on, idling. 
• VIA should tack a P42 (we just have them sitting around!) onto every Siemens consist in the event the Venture locomotive breaks down.
• VIA operations centre should patch directly into the train's PA system to deliver operational updates every 15 minutes.
• VIA should keep all its older equipment on hand: F40's, P42's and LRC and HEP equipment until the Ventures' teething troubles are over.
• Don't do anything - the whole Venture fleet will be scrapped in the next 20 years! No, 10!!

YET ANOTHER VIA STORY THIS WEEK...

VIA Venture Set 12 operated as test train 331/334 on September 1/2, running from Toronto to Sarnia return, with Burton Manor and coach 8101 on the tail-end, no less. Photo (above) of No 331 posted to social media with the test run in progress. Two HEP cars along for the ride to assess pulling power. The long-awaited advent of Ventures venturing into Southwest Ontario revenue service may be at hand: VIA Nos 79 and 87 will have new fleet soon, likely meaning Nos 67, 68 and 72 and could be Venture-equipped as well, if cycling stays the same. 

Running extra...

The VIAriety in this post has stretched it out to the point that it resembles a Venture train pulling two ex-Canadian cars! VIA is just so newsworthy, and I'm not even touching trending topics from social media like baggage allowances, less liquor in Business Class, unreasonably high fares and such. There are certain behaviours that Canadians seem to own that I would classify as eating our young: sending our promising artists abroad to become famous before returning home, bitching about our hallowed institutions, and politely complaining about the weather and that moose on our front lawn.

Well if it's not VIA, or the aforementioned moose, it's politics. We have an unpopular JT for PM, a PP waiting in the wings, a JS stepping out of the confidence-and-supply agreement with JT, and a KH getting ready to debate DJT. Just for fun, make a list of former world leaders whose initials were JC! Fun! Hey, if you're old enough to remember the 1975 James Clavell novel, or young enough to Google: