Burnaby councillor questions CN track maintenance
Posted January 13, 2014 10:06 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
BURNABY (NEWS1130) – Railway inspections and maintenance are under new scrutiny following this weekend’s train derailment in Burnaby.
A washed-out beaver dam during a heavy rainfall is part of the reason given by CN for Saturday morning’s derailment.
The company says its tracks are routinely inspected. But Burnaby city councillor Sav Dhaliwal isn’t comforted.
“It does seem to me that perhaps the inspection — the way the tracks are maintained — really isn’t done properly,” he tells us.
Dhaliwal says city staff will be looking into the derailment, but he notes this is only the latest in a spate of problems on the tracks.
“There is much more needed to be done by both Transport Canada [and the] Transportation Safety Board to ensure railways are safe in Canada.”
The provincial environment ministry expects clean-up will continue for a few weeks but most of the spilled coal has been taken away.
The train was on the way from the Kootenays to North Vancouver when the cars left the track; three of them flipped onto the side. No one was hurt in the derailment.
