Caption: Send in the Troops

Things usually run smoothly on the railway, but occasionally a wrench gets thrown in the wheels. In this case, that wrench was a dozen freight cars that jumped the track on a CN 384 as it headed through the crossovers at Goreway, tieing up CN's main east-west line at the doorstep of their major Ontario intermodal terminal.

Most railway cleanup these days involves a combination of railway personnel and contractor equipment, and today there was plenty of both: more hardhats than you could shake a stick at, and a good number of Hulcher and CN trucks, cranes, and heavy machinery on site. As police stop traffic on Goreway Drive, a CN employee directs a Caterpillar sideboom tractor into position on the railway crossing, being careful to avoid hitting the crossing signal bridge with its boom. About the size of a D7 bulldozer, medium-sized sideboom tractors are popular cranes for railway cleanup applications, and this one has all the usual hooks, ropes, chains, slings, and even cutting torch tanks on the front. The "Catskinner" will maneuver her onto the north track, and head west along the railway tracks to help another tractor right the derailed cars.

Red-hatted employees from rail cleanup contractor Hulcher are also pictured, heading to the derailment site, along with CN's Mobile 1 command post trailer stationed in the background. Combined efforts would see the line opened for limited rail service the next day.