GODERICH, ONT. -- The slow and steady job of deconstructing and moving four derailed train cars, and two derailed engines, is underway in Goderich.
“There’s a crew here from Quebec to due the heavy lifting. Everything is in place,” says Goderich’s Mayor, John Grace.
On Monday, over 30 rail cars, and two engines, came hurtling towards Goderich’s harbour out of control after leaving the Goderich grain elevators, earlier that afternoon.
A tractor trailer, pickup truck, and historical fishing shanty were all damaged or destroyed by the runaway train, but no one was killed or even injured.
Three days later, the investigation by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada is complete, and the meticulous clean up is underway, well ahead of schedule.
“We are surprised, but the more meetings we had, especially with the Goderich-Exeter railway, we found out how determined they were to get this cleaned up as quickly as possible, and get Goderich back to its daily routine,” says Grace.
Grace expects to be able to reopen Harbour Road to traffic, the only road access to Goderich’s beach, as early as Friday That’s when he expects all these derailed train cars to be cleaned up, and moved off site.
Finding out the cause may take longer, as investigators focus on the locomotive’s black box.
“Every locomotive is equipped with a locomotive event recorder. That’s standard practice in any investigation, where we would access the data from the event recorder. We have experts on staff who analyze that, and tell us what’s going on,” says Rob Johnston with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.
“I’m sure the companies involved will also have their own investigations into what happened, but we won’t hear about that for sometime yet. This is all takes time,” says Grace.
Grace adds he’s still amazed no one was killed or injured during the derailment. He says the community is fortunate this didn’t happen during the summertime, when more people congregate along the harbour front
