Rail line joint snaps during derailment
Trillium Railway crews were busy Monday afternoon trying to get three derailed hopper cars back on track after a joint on the rail line snapped between Clarence Street and Fielden Avenue in Port Colborne.
Railway operations manager Paul Robinson said the joint snapped due to pressure caused by fully-loaded cars pushing outward as they started to come off the rails.
“They were pushing 14 cars from the former Robin Hood to ADM Milling and cars 2, 3 and 4 came off the rails. They were only doing three miles an hour at the time and were able to stop within 15 feet.”
Robinson said the first thing the rail company did was to move the remaining hopper cars blocking both Fielden and Clarence.
Robinson said the hopper cars were loaded with grain and mustard seed and would weigh 118,350 kilograms each. He suspects they may have been overloaded. The railway had a derailment in the same location just more than a month ago. Five fullyloaded hopper cars came off the rails.
He said the company worked on the tracks in the area, adding more spikes and installing rods.
“We bolstered the tracks as best we could,” he said, adding the spikes and ties did hold during Monday’s incident, while the rods snapped.
He said there was no danger of the hopper cars tipping over and said the company hoped to have the tracks cleared sometime Tuesday.
Trillium, founded in 1997, has yards in Wainfleet, Port Colborne and Welland and serves 19 customers in Niagara on 50 kilometres of tracks.
Some of its customers include Jungbunzlauer, Riverland AG (the former Robin Hood), Dunn Paper, SLM Recycling and Vesuvius Canada.
It counts wheat, scrap metal, corn syrup, steel ingots and biodiesel as some of the cargo it handles.