Comments on: Yates, Alberta, is the first station east of a crew change point at Edson on CN’s Edson sub., and is immediately west of a steel bridge over the McLeod River. On Sunday 1987-05-24, VIA train No. 4 was powered by VIA 6313 + 6607 as it departed the east switch (note signals in the distance) and headed for the bridge and onward to Edmonton. This post on Monday 2024-08-12 is recognition of the 28th anniversary of Monday 1996-08-12 when westward CN train symbol 117 encountered a rolling runaway cut of twenty cars from the yard at Edson, with three fatalities, at the precise location of my photo a bit over nine years earlier. Having been involved as a locomotive event recorder technician in numerous accident investigations, the ones hardest to deal with were where fatalities occurred in locations known well from photos taken there and with the crew totally blameless. In the 1996 collision at Yates, conductor Kenneth Robert Trout and engineer Jacob Charles Elder plus visitor John Eric Fraser were lost.

By: sdfourty

sdfourty — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 16:03:20 +0000

There is something about that operational area….Hinton…Edson…

By: Ken Perry

Ken Perry — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 05:30:32 +0000

https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/rail/1996/r96c0172/r96c0172.html

By: Ken Perry

Ken Perry — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 05:29:30 +0000

See for all the official details, with extracts as follow:

“On the evening of Monday, 12 August 1996, all three occupants in the operating cab of the lead locomotive of Canadian National (CN) westward freight train No. 117 were fatally injured when their train, which was travelling at about 54 mph, collided head-on with a cut of 20 runaway cars moving eastward at about 30 mph, some six miles east of Edson, Alberta.”

“The first two locomotives (CN9627 and CN9575) at the front end of train 117 were destroyed and the third locomotive (CN9508) was repaired and returned to service.”