In February 1991, trains of VIA and CP came rather close to colliding on the Smiths Falls Subdivision at Smiths Falls, Ontario. For some reason, video of the incident has now surfaced on the web more than twenty years after it occurred. I was alerted to it by a friend so I thought I'd post it here.
Bob
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HOLY CRAP! 
Kudos the the freight engineer who started to back up. He saved this from being a mess.
Wow.... That was wild.
God dang son!!!! Wow that was something....
Chris
Wonder what the root cause of THAT little incident was, and who got fired?
According to one account I read - not an official report - the CP man was doubling his train in the yard and for some reason not elaborated upon was occupying that particular track at the VIA train's scheduled time. At least some members of the CP crew were dismissed over the incident. Again, this wasn't from an official report but the source of the data seemed well informed regarding the situation.
Bob
Great video - nice to see a wreck avoided.
I assume that was the VIA engineer bailing out of the cab. Good thing the CP engineer had presence of mind to avert the accident rather than just bail out and save himself. The VIA engineer had to be thinking that a miracle happened when he saw there wasn't going to be a collision.
I assume that was the VIA engineer bailing out of the cab. Good thing the CP engineer had presence of mind to avert the accident rather than just bail out and save himself.
While I'm no expert, those experts above can enlighten me. It appears from the video that the VIA was thrown into emergency, and thats about all the VIA engineer can do at that point outside of trying to save himself.
Amazing video Bob, thanks for posting.
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