The train derailment outside Union Station last week was caused by rail fastenings that failed on a part of the track after screws “sheared” and ultimately “gave way” under the pressure, according to preliminary findings by Metrolinx.
The provincial transit agency previously said that a train on the Kitchener line was leaving Union Station at a low speed on the morning of Feb. 2 when it derailed. The incident prompted frustration from some customers after it triggered widespread delays across the GO network for days.
At a meeting for Metrolinx’s board of directors on Thursday, CEO Michael Lindsay provided an update on the incident, including what has been learned since the train derailed.
He said a preliminary report suggests that rail fastening on the south track of depot rail three failed, adding that screws on timber plates “sheared under fatigue” and let go.
“Following the derailment of the locomotive and the following coach… the train pulled through two switches, destroying that infrastructure and some of the signaling infrastructure that ultimately went with it,” he said, adding that this caused significant operational challenges for GO Transit.
He noted that the train became disabled in a way that took four platforms out of service at Union Station for multiple days.
Upon investigation, he said, Metrolinx learned that the required number of screws were not used to fasten the plates, something that was not caught by previous inspections by Toronto Terminals Railway (TTR), which is responsible for maintaining the track.
“These lag screws should be fastened by four screws in the plate. At this particular location, they were fastened by two. Our standards were updated in 2016 to require four screws at each of these locations,” Lindsay said.
Track has been inspected and ‘is safe,’ CEO says
He said given the slow speed that trains are required to go when entering and exiting the rail corridor around Union Station, no injuries were reported.
Lindsay said crews have now inspected the track to see if other areas are not in compliance with the policy.
“In the one or two places where we have found such non-compliance, fixes were affected immediately,” he said.
“I can offer a very confident assurance both to the board as well as to our riding public that the (Union Station Rail Corridor) and the track within it has been inspected and is safe.”
Metrolinx’s CEO credited TTR for the “round-the-clock” work that brought service back online on Feb. 7.
“That is a rapid recovery and turnaround in view of the work that had to be done,” he said.
Communication a ‘key lesson’
Lindsay said Metrolinx will continue to review its own protocols in relation to the incident to ensure proper inspections are carried out and the agency has effective communication with the public in the event of future incidents.
He said one of the “key lessons” that agency has taken away from the incident is the importance of “communication of information in a time of crisis.”
“It might not be fully visible to the travelling public, but when something like this happens, given the manual nature of the way in which we route traffic through the Union Station Rail Corridor, we had to, in real time with the network operations centre, figure out a plan of how we were going to move trains through each of the tracks and people in and out of the station,” he said.
“That was a highly manual process that on the Monday we had to do.”
Lindsay noted that it became clear the displays screens and the technology that is used to broadcast departure times and platforms throughout the station “could not keep up with the volume of the changes.”
“So the other commitment that I would make to both the board as well as to the travelling public is that we will use this particular incident to think about protocols of communication at Union Station if for some remote reason an incident like this occurred again,” he said.
