One of the observations, after the Transportation Safety Board released its report on last summer’s Via Rail derailment near Hudson Bay, is that where railway and highways departments share a common drainage basin, they don’t share information relating to infrastructure in the area.
According to the TSB report highway employees had seen a partial washout of a nearby roadway but the culverts were still in place. They couldn’t see the rail line, however, with the highway breached, the excess water flowed overland and eventually flooded the track subgrade . On July 5th, 2018 two locomotives and two rail cars derailed, about 800 feet of track was damaged or destroyed, 16 passengers and five crew members were evacuated and two crew members were taken to hospital. They were released later that day.

According to the report, the rail crew was concerned enough about high water near the track that it had slowed the train to 53 kilometres an hour when it derailed. In the four days prior to the derailment, a total of 101.5 mm of rain had fallen. On the day before the accident, a rainfall warning bulletin had been issued that forecasted heavy rains from Hudson Bay to Porcupine Plain. In addition to the washout location at the derailment site, there were 9 other washout locations further north.

Safety action taken by CN Rail:

• CN’s SkyGuard warning system was modified to identify weekly accumulation of precipitation and to communicate warnings when water capacity thresholds are reached for a specific area.
• When rainfall occurs over multiple days and sustained accumulation has been identified, the number of patrols in front of trains will be increased.
• When CN is informed by its weather information provider that a certain area is expected to exceed 40 mm of continuous rain or that a severe weather advisory is to be issued, CN will implement additional track patrols that will continue for 4 hours after the rain stops to monitor drainage along the railway right-of-way.