Rail crews need lookout, safety board says

Members of a railway maintenance team struck and injured by a train on Boxing Day were supposed to be working under safety procedures that call for one worker to act as a lookout for danger, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada says.

The board is investigating the incident, in which three employees of A&B Rail Services — a contractor for CN Rail — were hit as they cleared snow off the tracks at Meridian Street and Hayter Road in Edmonton’s northeast.

Police said the men were wearing ear protection while using snow blowers and did not hear the train, which was travelling about 40 kilometres per hour.

What is not yet clear is why none of the men saw the train. However, a spokesman for the Transportation Safety Board said a protocol known as “Safety Watch” was supposed to be in effect.

“The sole duty of the working personnel through the observance of Safety Watch is to protect all train and track unit movements and hazards from all directions,” says a TSB report from September, which explains the protocol. “The Safety Watch must dedicate their entire attention to this task and never engage in other activities, which could detract them from this primary responsibility to protect others.”

It goes on to say the Safety Watch must always remain in a position to immediately warn fellow employees.

“In other words, you have a crew and one person is assigned, and that person’s sole function is to ensure there is no train coming from any direction while the crew is working on the track,” said John Cottreau, safety board spokesman.

Safety Watch, part of CN’s general engineering instructions, is used for minor tasks in which there is relatively low risk for workers, the report said. Situations of higher risk, involving poor sightlines or fast-moving trains, are governed by federal rules and require greater protections, including advance notice to the rail traffic controller in the area, and specific signalling.

Sheilagh Moore, spokeswoman for A&B Rail Services, declined to answer questions Friday about whether the snow-blowing crew was employing Safety Watch, and whether any of the three men was assigned to monitoring the track.

“As I am sure you can appreciate, we would prefer to wait until all the information is gathered and we are able to review it en masse before we discuss any specifics,” she said in an email.

CN spokeswoman Emily Hamer said all rail workers have safety policies for working on or near the tracks. However, she couldn’t say if CN’s specific Safety Watch rules apply to contractors.

She said the railway is conducting its own investigation, which will include a review of operating procedures and safety, but the company will not discuss the incident further until that probe is complete.

The three injured employees are all expected to survive, even though two were brought to hospital in critical condition. The most seriously injured is a 20-year-old man, who is expected to face a long recovery. The other two workers, 28 and 32 years old, are set to be released shortly.

Cottreau said the Boxing Day incident has some similarities to fatal accident in July 2011 at Durham Junction, east of Toronto, in which a CN employee was hit by a Via train.

In its report on the death, the Transportation Safety Board found the incorrect use of Safety Watch was a major contributing factor. The two employees at the work site were both concentrating on replacing a missing bolt, and no one was watching the tracks, the board found.

Furthermore, the board ruled the maintenance crew did not have adequate sightlines because the work site was just beyond a curve in the tracks. In such a dangerous area, more stringent protections should have been used beyond the basic Safety Watch protocol, it said.

As a result of that case, CN upgraded its Safety Watch training by updating the sightline distance chart; creating a list of tasks that can be performed with Safety Watch protection; and giving more than 3,000 employees new instruction on the protocol. It is unclear if contractors were also given the training.

Cottreau said his safety board has two investigators looking into the Boxing Day incident. Interviews are being conducted with workers on the locomotive and the rail traffic controllers.

“When the time is right, when the folks who were injured are able to tell us what happened, we will be asking for an interview,” he said. “We will be gathering any type of information that can help us determine the causes and contributing factors that led to the accident.”

Alberta Occupational Health and Safety, which is also investigating, has placed a stopwork order on A&B Rail Services. The order is limited to on-track cleaning and maintenance involving “noise-generating equipment.”

A&B Rail Services has more than 500 employees in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, with about 250 of those are based out of the head office in Edmonton.