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On 8 February 1986, a Via Rail passenger train and a 118-car Canadian National Railway freight train collide after the freight train crew fail to stop at a red railway signal on a section of a passing loop, killing 23 people. An inquiry concluded that a "railroader culture", which prized loyalty and productivity at the expense of safety, had resulted in a tired and sick crew of three, including an engineer at extreme risk of a stroke or heart attack, to either fall asleep or be otherwise incapacitated, failing to stop the freight train.
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00:02An enormous freight train is out of control, tearing through the Canadian Rockies.
00:08The crew does nothing to slow the train's terrifying speed.
00:13Jack, are you there?
00:15Charging the other way, a passenger train with more than a hundred people on board.
00:28Front end, Jack, come in.
00:33Oh my god.
00:58It's one of the most spectacular train rides in the world.
01:02Every year, thousands of people take the slow and easy way through Canada's Rocky Mountains.
01:08Avoiding traffic, they take the train and leave the driving to somebody else.
01:15In late winter, 1986, a gentle trip through the Rockies will end tragically.
01:27It was like a mini-atom bomb.
01:30And all of a sudden, it ignited.
01:37I can hear the women screaming, you know.
01:45To save her baby.
01:51An investigation makes shocking discoveries about the Canadian railroad industry.
01:57At that time, I didn't think that anything was wrong.
02:11February the 8th, 1986.
02:14Spectacular northern lights dance across the sky over Edson, Alberta in Western Canada.
02:26Driving freight trains has been a lifelong dream for 48-year-old Canadian National Railways engineer, Jack Hudson.
02:36But after 16 years on the job, he knows all too well that it can be a gruelling career.
02:44Because Canadian freight trains travel such vast distances, up to 12 local crews may be used in the course of
02:50one cross-country journey.
02:52Hudson works a mountainous stretch of track through Alberta, running between his hometown of Jasper and Edson to the east.
03:03At around 11pm last night, Hudson got off the freight train from Jasper and spent the night here in the
03:11company bunkhouse at Edson.
03:16Now he's up again, after just three and a half hours of sleep, ready to return to Jasper.
03:28At this station, he's joined by his brake man.
03:31Like Hudson, 25-year-old Mark Edwards lives in Jasper.
03:35And like Hudson, he hasn't slept very much.
03:39Did you get some rest?
03:40Not much. Better touch the flu.
03:43Could use a full night's sleep.
03:46Hudson and Edwards will ride up front in the first engine.
03:49Hudson drives the train, while Edwards keeps an eye on the brakes and pitches in if Hudson needs any help.
03:57Known to his fellow railmen as Smitty, 33-year-old Wayne Smith is Hudson's conductor.
04:03He's the last of the three-man crew in charge of the freight train this morning.
04:07Smitty?
04:11Smith rides in the caboose, the last car in the train.
04:14He acts as an extra set of eyes, making sure the men in the front end know what's going on
04:19behind them.
04:21The three men are long-time employees of Canadian National, or CN, Rail.
04:26And all of them have been up and down this length of track countless times before.
04:35The train they're riding today is enormous.
04:38CN train 413 is just under two kilometers long.
04:42The cars are filled with a collection of grain, metal pipes and chemicals.
04:46It tips the scales at more than 11 million kilos.
04:53As the freighter rolls into Edson, it slows to a crawl, but doesn't stop.
04:58Getting it started again would take time, and the crew wants their trip to begin as soon as possible.
05:05Hudson and Edwards take the train on the fly, boarding it as it rolls slowly along.
05:12According to CN Rail's code of conduct, this is illegal, but it's something crews do routinely.
05:24With the caboose still nearly two kilometers away, Smith stands by the track to inspect the cargo as it crawls
05:31by.
05:31He makes sure there's nothing obviously wrong with the freight or the cars carrying it.
05:36All set, Jack. Clear signal leaving Edson.
05:43Clear signal leaving Edson.
05:47Another part of Smith's job is to stay in touch with the front end of the train.
05:50He's supposed to make sure they're alert throughout the journey.
06:01Now, with the caboose pulling alongside the platform, Smith climbs aboard.
06:11Okay, he's got the brakes off. You're good to go. See you later.
06:20At 6.40am, Hudson pushes the throttle.
06:23The freight train picks up speed as its 8,000-horsepower diesel engines open up.
06:29The CN freight train begins the long haul west to Jasper.
06:33The men are going home.
06:35As 4.13 roars west, a VIA passenger train speeds east on the same track.
06:48VIA Rail's supercontinental passenger train number 4 is cruising toward Edmonton, Alberta.
06:58More than 100 passengers are enjoying the spectacular scenery as it cruises through the rugged Canadian Rockies.
07:0736-year-old Jamie Haight is a car assembly operator.
07:11He's headed home to Ontario after a two-week visit to his family in Vancouver.
07:15It's a very, very small community that you're in close proximity with a lot of people very, very suddenly.
07:23And so there's a lot of people we got to meet and got to interact with.
07:27I remember there was a couple of ladies that we met over dinner.
07:32One was very, very pregnant.
07:36While some passengers are still sleeping, Haight goes into the day coach to do some reading before breakfast.
07:42It's the fourth car in the train.
07:43I remember this lady and she had a little boy with her, about three years old or whatever.
07:50He was quite in awe. The little child was quite in awe of the scenery.
07:54So I sat down in it and I lifted the shade a little bit so I could get some of
07:58the daylight coming in.
07:59And I started to read a pocket novel.
08:10Several cars behind Haight is 61-year-old assistant conductor Herbert Timpy.
08:15An old hand on the Canadian passenger line, he's been riding this piece of track for seven years.
08:20I had to be the assistant conductor and look after the passengers on that train.
08:27Next stop.
08:29Hinton.
08:32The passenger train is pulling into Hinton.
08:35The freight train is just about to reach Hargwen Station, 20 kilometres east.
08:41Here, the rail line briefly splits into two, so trains can pass each other.
08:46413 will take the upper track, while the passenger train passes below it.
08:53As Hudson approaches the split in the tracks, traffic signal lights tell him to slow down.
09:01Smitty, we've got an Approach Limited signal at Hargwen.
09:04Next station, Dalehurst, over.
09:09Head in to 413, Approach Limited at Hargwen. Next station, Dalehurst, out.
09:17These are the last words these men will ever exchange.
09:25The dispatcher in Edmonton sets a switch, and 413 is forced onto the upper track.
09:42The Via passenger train arrives at Hinton station at 8.20am.
09:47On board, 64-year-old Martin Pedersen settles down to breakfast in the downstairs lounge of the dome car.
09:54He's feeling rested after a good night's sleep.
09:57A former World War II fighter pilot, Pedersen has a lot of experience with locomotives.
10:03Over the course of the war, he blew up 36 enemy trains in France.
10:13The night before, Pedersen swapped war stories with another veteran he met on board.
10:1961-year-old Kenneth Cuttle is a former Royal Marine.
10:22It was February. I was going to Edmonton to look for another job.
10:30Like Pedersen, Cuttle also fought behind enemy lines in World War II.
10:34Cuttle and Pedersen are survivors.
10:37Let's go upstairs to the dome car, have a look around, see what's happening.
10:40The train was pretty comfortable, you know, not many people on board.
10:44I said, let's go up to the dome car because it was just coming light and we see lots of
10:50things which you might not get another chance to see.
10:53We were in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
10:57There are now 115 people on board.
11:01But the train will never make it to Edmonton.
11:03And the passengers and crew enjoying the early morning trip will soon be fighting for their lives.
11:16It's a clear, sunny morning on board a passenger train in Western Canada.
11:21Breakfast is being served as the train rolls east through the Canadian Rockies.
11:26Just 15 kilometres away, an 11 million kilo freight train, CN413, rumbles down the track towards it.
11:34With diesel engines still pounding at full throttle, it's pulling 113 rail cars of grain and hazardous material.
11:43From the outside, everything looks normal.
11:45But what's going on inside the lead engine of 413 is about to become one of the greatest mysteries in
11:51Canadian railroad history.
11:58Freight trains and passenger trains often travel on the same track.
12:02For short sections, the track splits, so trains heading in opposite directions can pass safely.
12:08Today, 413 is on the upper branch.
12:12Signals tell the freight train to slow, then stop completely.
12:15The signals will only turn green again once the passenger train has passed safely by below.
12:21Then the freight train can rejoin the main line.
12:30But 413 isn't slowing down.
12:33It's now heading downhill and it charges through the warning lights.
12:36If it doesn't stop soon, it will return to the main line at full speed, straight into the path of
12:42the passenger train.
12:45Unaware of the bizarre behaviour of 413, the passenger train continues east.
12:53Martin Pedersen gets his breakfast.
13:04Up ahead, the freighter thunders through the last set of light signals, ignoring three red lights that command it to
13:11stop.
13:17It slams back onto the main line.
13:20It's travelling 95 kilometres an hour and weighs more than 11 million kilos.
13:24And still it doesn't slow down.
13:32Herbert Timpy sits to relax.
13:37Ken Cuttle has a clear view of the railway ahead.
13:40I got in a conversation with an English guy and he had his back to the front and I was
13:46looking over his shoulder, forward, the way the train was going.
13:50There was a flickering light in the distance.
13:54And not knowing the track layout, I thought, oh, there must be another line and if it's another train, it's
14:02going to go past us, you know?
14:16Just as I was reading the pocket novel, one of the girls from the partier group happened to just walk
14:22past me.
14:35Oh, my God.
14:39Oh, my God!
14:41Oh, my God!
14:44And then, boom.
14:55The trains collide like two charging rams at a combined speed of nearly 200 kilometres per hour.
15:03Passengers are rocked by one collision after another as 70 freight cars pile into the wreckage.
15:09Like an incoming wave, grain cars, long pipes three foot in diameter, 30 feet in length, you name it.
15:18And these were flying through the air like toys.
15:22Thrown from the tracks by the force of the collision, one freight car flies through the air, smashing to a
15:28stop on the Via train.
15:29The whole world seemed to explode.
15:34It was like a mini atom bomb.
15:38It was a big mushroom of black smoke.
15:49Then, everything was dark.
15:53They could no longer breathe because everything was filled with smoke.
16:01Oh, I'm going to die.
16:04And the third thing that happened was I just resigned myself to that.
16:13I've been working about 37 years and on the railroad and I never, never seen anything so bad.
16:26The wave of metal, grain cars stopped just where the dome car was.
16:34If it had gone another 30 feet, it would have covered us as well.
16:38In the same car, one deck below, Martin Pedersen struggles to escape.
16:43But he can barely see what's happening in front of him.
16:46The window beside him shattered during impact, filling his eyes with broken glass.
16:57Almost two kilometers behind the engine, the caboose of train 413 finally lurches to a stop.
17:05Conductor Wayne Smith sees a ball of fire glowing in the distance, but he has no idea how bad the
17:11situation is.
17:13Front end 413. I think we're in the bush or we're derailed.
17:18There is a big explosion up here and we have chemicals on the train.
17:21So stay away from it. Stay away from the dangerous goods.
17:28But all Smith gets in reply is an ominous silence.
17:35Passengers continue to struggle to escape the mangled wreck of their train as the smoke thickens.
17:40I was trained well in the Royal Marines to survive and to act spontaneously.
17:46There was a window at the back of the dome car and it was all cracked and I just jumped
17:52up on the seat,
17:53smashed my head through the glass roof,
17:57and shouted,
17:58come on, let's get out.
18:05Cuttle and others jump from the car.
18:09I look back and all of a sudden it ignited.
18:18Get out of my way.
18:28Down below in the lounge car, Martin Pedersen also manages to escape.
18:34But others aren't so lucky.
18:36Many are still trapped in the burning cars, including passenger Jamie Haight.
18:41The roof of the coach had been crunched down.
18:44I mean, I'd lost my glasses.
18:46I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe.
18:49And here it was the porter that had been behind the snack bar,
18:52had opened up this exit way and he had vamoosed out through it.
18:58And I took off out behind it too.
19:11Snap out of it.
19:12Snap out of it.
19:12He was in shock.
19:13Hey, snap out of it.
19:14Hey buddy, pull it together here.
19:16You know, there's people in here and we gotta do something about it, but...
19:23Half blind without his glasses, Haight goes back inside, trying to help others out of the wreck.
19:31413 here, dispatcher.
19:32Back in the caboose, Smith is talking to the freight train's dispatcher,
19:36some 285 kilometers away in Edmonton.
19:40We're gonna get a doctor out here.
19:42And some ambulance.
19:42Herb Timpey, the assistant conductor on the passenger train,
19:45can hear the conversation on his radio and breaks in.
19:48Passenger coaches all over the ditch.
19:50And get an ambulance.
19:53And there's a whole bunch of cars on fire.
19:55You get that dispatcher?
19:57I'm gonna walk up there and see if I can be of any assistance.
20:01What was the signal at Dalehurst when your head in called it?
20:04Pardon me?
20:05What was that signal on that signal at Dalehurst?
20:11Well, I was calling him for the signal at Dalehurst quite a few times,
20:14but I kept calling him and there was no answer.
20:17Well, it should have been read on the panel.
20:20Well, he must have read it then, dispatcher,
20:22because I could not get a hold of him.
20:24I tried and I tried.
20:26Okay.
20:26All right.
20:33Back at the head of the passenger train,
20:35Jamie Haidt tries to save who he can.
20:38Are you okay?
20:41I'm gonna help you.
20:43Haidt can hear the screams of men and women trapped in the flames.
20:47I can hear the women that I had dinner with the night before,
20:53screaming, you know,
20:58to save her baby.
21:04Kate was not able to save the mother and her child.
21:07They're out of reach under debris.
21:12That was, uh, that was difficult.
21:18People who were trapped and couldn't get out,
21:21screaming,
21:23screaming like you've never heard.
21:28One guy knew that his wife was trapped and he went back in and died with her.
21:38Another woman in the carriage under where we were had most of her leg cut off.
21:45James Haidt courageously decides to go back inside.
21:49The fire is a scorching 660 degrees, but Haidt tries to save one more life.
21:55There was a, there was a chop right in front of me there.
22:00And it was the chop I had dinner with the night before.
22:06And all of a sudden the flames came and consumed him.
22:14He just, just sat up and rubbed his head and...
22:18the fire.
22:22Because there's nothing more we could do it for him.
22:27Anybody in front of me in that coach was dead.
22:33For whatever the reasons, it wasn't my time to go then.
22:37For whatever the reasons.
22:41Wayne Smith is devastated.
22:43He can't reach his two friends at the front of the freight train.
22:46And he can't understand what happened to cause such an enormous disaster.
22:55In Western Canada, a freight train has smashed head on into a passenger train carrying more than a hundred people.
23:03In the minutes after the collision, survivors are dragging themselves from the burning wreckage,
23:08while others are still trapped inside.
23:13One of the girls that had been in the car in the morning,
23:17and I looked at her and I said,
23:19I'm sorry to tell you, you're...
23:23He had no choice but to tell her what happened to her friend in the train.
23:30Your, uh...
23:31Your friend was in the car here.
23:35She died trapped in the burning debris.
23:39I felt like the worst person in the world.
23:41Because I had to tell her.
23:43If I could have taken back that one second in time,
23:46to not tell her, you know.
23:59Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Mark Linnell is one of the first to arrive on the scene.
24:05I was told there was a train derailment.
24:08Not a train crash.
24:10I mean, there's a double whammy.
24:13The RCMP officer came.
24:15He could hardly speak.
24:17His mouth dropped open and he said,
24:20I can't believe what I'm witnessing.
24:25It's a horrifying scene.
24:27Pictures taken shortly after the crash show utter devastation.
24:34I mean, I was just flabbergasted.
24:36I just couldn't believe it.
24:39And I...
24:40Instant.
24:42That's quite the thing to see.
24:52The collision is 18 kilometres from the town of Hinton.
24:55It takes emergency crews some 45 minutes to get there.
24:59I was in the Marines in England for 14 years.
25:02I'd seen a lot, a lot of...
25:05disasters, man-made disasters, terrorist bombs.
25:08I thought I'd seen it all.
25:10There was a lot of blunt force trauma, of course.
25:14Flying glass burns.
25:18And then I saw what appeared to be two bodies in the restaurant car hugging each other.
25:24So we found out later that was a man and wife.
25:27And this was one heck of a shock.
25:33As Linnell is escorting survivors away from the site,
25:36he sees a lone man with a radio coming down the track.
25:39How's the, uh, how's the front end doing?
25:41What's your name?
25:42It's...
25:43Smith is about to learn that his colleagues aboard his train are dead.
25:46What happened? Like, did they make contact with the...
25:48We're still under investigation, and there's not a lot I can tell you right now.
25:52Okay, so they still might be...
25:54I mean...
25:57They'd be distraught and shaken, and...
25:59His train is wrecked, and all these people dead.
26:26The Hinton train disaster is the worst railway accident to strike Canada in 35 years.
26:31More than 30 million dollars in property are destroyed.
26:3523 people are dead, and 71 others are severely injured.
26:47Wayne Smith is the only surviving crew member of the CN train.
26:50The only man who may be able to explain how an 11 million kilo freighter ploughed headfirst into an oncoming
26:57passenger train.
26:59What he knows could be critical to unraveling the cause of the disaster.
27:05Two days after the collision, the Alberta government establishes an official commission of inquiry.
27:11And the Honorable Mr. Justice Rene P. Foise leads the investigation.
27:16Judge Foise is a justice of the Alberta Court of Appeal.
27:20It was reasonably simple. I mean, what caused the accident?
27:25But it turned out to be a lot more complicated than that, because there were no easy answers as to
27:30what caused the accident.
27:32Freight and passenger trains routinely use the same tracks without incident.
27:37What was different this time?
27:39Over the next 11 months, Foise calls on 150 witnesses and specialists to help him find out.
27:45I think what has most surprised me is the complex procedures, the equipment, the overall complexity that we have to
27:54look at in running a railroad, and what goes on in running a railroad.
27:57While Conductor Smith recovers from the accident, Foise gets to work.
28:02He begins by studying the signals that should have told the freight train to stop.
28:07If they weren't working, the crew on 413 may not have thought they needed to slow down.
28:12What's the difference?
28:15What's the difference?
28:16G. N. did a very in-depth test on the signal system, and it was determined that it was performing
28:26properly.
28:29We went further. We hired our own independent experts to test the system.
28:36The switches which operate the signal lights were frozen in position after the accident.
28:41Electrical engineer Eugene Couch was hired to read them.
28:45Perhaps a mechanical fault in the system had turned them green, telling the freight train to speed through.
28:52A fault does not give a positive green light to any situation.
28:57So if there was a fault in any control part of the system, it would have forced everything to go
29:03to red, which meant the passenger train would have stopped, and would have forced the freight train to stop.
29:08Basically our conclusion, we felt that the system was sound and was safe.
29:14Foisy believes the lights were red, but the freight train ignored them.
29:18Perhaps another mechanical fault was behind the crash.
29:21Well, I was calling him for the signal.
29:23In his statement after the crash, conductor Wayne Smith told Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers that something was wrong with
29:30his radio that morning.
29:31Because I could not get a hold of him. I tried and I tried.
29:36Maybe the front of the train was having mechanical problems, but they weren't able to get in contact with Smith.
29:42Joseph Hebert examines the portable radios the crew used.
29:46The first test was with the radio that was on the train that was in the accident at Hinton.
29:53The radio performed the specification.
29:56But even if the radios themselves were working, there could be another problem.
30:01Many CN employees claimed there are places along the tracks where radio communication is impossible, so-called dead spots.
30:08And it's not a dead spot that's there 365 days out of the year.
30:11The possibility was also examined and dismissed.
30:14Sometimes you can't. Some radios are stronger, some are weaker.
30:19The second test done as far as communication between the locomotive and the caboose was done with the same type
30:26of radio as was used at the time the accident took place.
30:33The field test with that type of radio had satisfactory performance.
30:38The evidence was pretty clear and we concluded that there were no dead spots.
30:46If the signals were red and the radios were working, why had the train crashed?
30:53Foyze examines an ingenious piece of technology, the hotbox detector.
30:58Sitting beside the track, hotboxes monitor the temperature of a train's wheels and axles.
31:04They also record the speed of trains as they roar by.
31:08When Foyze and his advisers examine the hotbox data, they make a telling discovery.
31:17When the front of the freight train passed the hotbox detector just after Hargwen, it was travelling a little over
31:2360 kilometres an hour.
31:25But by the time the caboose passed it, the train was going more than 74 kilometres an hour.
31:31Despite the signals telling it to slow down, the train was speeding up.
31:37For the last five miles we were able to determine that the freight train was going at least 59 miles
31:45an hour, perhaps as high as 60 or 61.
31:48There were no brake applications before the crash as well.
31:52The crew let the train travel too fast.
31:55They did not heed signals to stop, and they never applied the brakes.
31:59It all points to a train that was out of control.
32:04Why there were no brake applications is difficult to understand.
32:11Oh my God!
32:16With mechanical problems ruled out, Foyze begins to examine the crew of the freight train.
32:22Perhaps there's something about engineer Jack Hudson, who was in charge of the train, that could explain what happened that
32:28day.
32:30As Foyze begins sifting through Hudson's medical records and interviewing his family, he makes a disturbing discovery.
32:40A train collision in Western Canada has killed 23 people. Another 71 are injured.
32:47The man leading the inquiry into the disaster has ruled out mechanical problems.
32:52Judge René Foyze now takes a closer look at Jack Hudson, the 16-year veteran who was driving the freight
32:58train.
33:00When Foyze and the commission review Hudson's medical files, they're shocked by what they discover.
33:05Mr. Hudson was a man who was sick. He was an alcoholic. He had high blood pressure, which was problematic.
33:16He had diabetes.
33:18He had a pancreatic attack the summer before this accident. He had to wear a colostomy for a number of
33:27months.
33:28Foyze wonders if this long list of illnesses could somehow have led to the train crash.
33:33The engineer Jack Hudson had been killed outright in the crash and had severe injuries.
33:39So we couldn't determine whether there'd been a catastrophic medical event, whether he'd had a heart attack, for example, or
33:45a stroke, which had incapacitated him.
33:47But we were able to do toxicology and there was no alcohol or drugs present.
33:52He did have a lot of health problems and he had some problems at home.
33:58That these problems at home appeared to be on the mend.
34:01And that he was not the kind of man who, if he was going to commit suicide, would take 23
34:07people with him and injure another 70, some of them very, very seriously.
34:12So we discounted that possibility of a suicide.
34:16If it wasn't suicide, if Hudson did have a stroke or heart attack at the controls, why didn't his brake
34:22man, Mark Edwards, take any action?
34:25Investigators come up with one plausible answer.
34:29Did you get some rest?
34:31Not much. I had a touch of the flu. I could use a full night's sleep.
34:38Perhaps Edwards had been asleep on the job.
34:42Dr. Alison Smiley is an expert on sleep and fatigue.
34:47Jack Hudson, he had had at the very most, before he went on duty that day, three and a half
34:53hours of sleep.
34:54And that is if he slept from the last moment somebody saw him till the moment somebody next saw him
35:01again, three and a half hours.
35:05Brakeman said he had a touch of the flu and he'd had five hours sleep the night before.
35:11Wayne Smith similarly had had insufficient sleep about five hours before they cleared him.
35:20As the freight train passed the signals telling it to stop, the entire crew may have been fast asleep.
35:26You could work at any time of the day, so one day you might start at four o'clock in
35:31the morning, the next day you start at two in the afternoon.
35:35Their hours were so erratic, they were continually in a jet lag state because their physiology was never sort of
35:43fully adjusted to any particular working hours.
35:49When it comes to staying alert, train engineers face many challenges, including long rides up and down the same stretch
35:57of track.
35:58The tracks going by one after the other, it's a very soporific situation to work in and easy to see
36:10how somebody, no matter how motivated, could fall asleep.
36:17At the time, trains were equipped with safety devices that would automatically stop a train if the engine man died
36:23or fell asleep, the so-called dead man's pedal.
36:28Basically, the engineer is supposed to keep his foot on the pedal, and while his foot is on the pedal,
36:35the train won't stop.
36:36If that pedal isn't depressed, then it will, after a number of seconds, give a warning, which is quite audible.
36:45And if nothing happens, then it will stop the train.
36:48But Foisy discovers that for many trainmen, disabling the dead man's pedal is standard practice.
36:54One of the excuses that was given by the engineers is that to go long distances, having to keep your
37:01foot on that pedal was very uncomfortable.
37:04And so that they would sometimes put something on the pedal, a lunchbox or something heavy enough to keep it
37:11depressed so that they could stretch their legs.
37:15Unfortunately, what was happening, this pedal was being depressed for long, long periods of time.
37:23But even if Edwards and Hudson had fallen asleep at the front of the train, and the dead man's pedal
37:29was rigged, conductor Wayne Smith at the back could still have prevented the disaster.
37:35Almost two months into the Foisy inquiry, Smith takes the stand.
37:39Doctors had kept him from testifying earlier, saying he was too traumatized by the accident.
37:44Now, for the first time, investigators will hear Smith reconstruct events on board his train in the moments leading up
37:51to the disaster.
37:52I was sitting, looking out the back of the train from my desk when we passed mile board 169.
37:59That's the landmark that I used to initiate a call to the engineer to ask for the display at the
38:07Dalehurst approach signal.
38:12Head end to 413, what indication do you have at the Dalehurst approach signal 1703, over.
38:20Head end to 413.
38:21The front end of the train is supposed to respond, letting Smith know that they've seen the signal lights telling
38:26them to slow down.
38:27Head of 413, can you hear me, over?
38:30I probably called him three or four times.
38:33I didn't get a response on my grey radio.
38:37There was something wrong with it.
38:40What's the indication at signal 1703, over?
38:46It's a surprising piece of testimony.
38:49Foyze already knows the radios were working fine.
38:55When Smith is asked how fast he thought the train was going before the collision, Foyze gets another surprise.
39:01I felt the front end give a light brake application on the caboose.
39:06Coming around the curve, I felt we were doing a track speed of about 50 miles an hour or less.
39:13But according to the hotbox detectors, the train was travelling almost 16 kilometres an hour over track speed, and there
39:19was never any application of the brakes.
39:22I went to my red radio, and I tried to get a hold of him on it.
39:29Jack, how's the Dalehurst approach signal 1703?
39:34I was calling him on channel one three or four times, and there was no answer, so I tried to
39:40get a hold of him on different channels.
39:43But once again, Smith's testimony doesn't add up.
39:46Foyze has heard from other train men who were monitoring their radios in the area that day.
39:51No one heard Smith call.
39:54Smith says he was still trying to contact Hudson when the end of the train raced past signals telling it
39:59to slow down.
40:01Jack!
40:02As an experienced train man, Smith knows that the next set of lights will likely be a triple red, telling
40:08the train to stop.
40:11He was getting no answer, and the train wasn't slowing down.
40:15An emergency brake cord was in easy reach, but Smith never pulled it.
40:21Jack, are you there?
40:22With Hudson mysteriously silent, Smith says he does nothing but continue to call the front end.
40:30Front end. Jack, come in.
40:32Why in the circumstances that you've described did you not pull the brake?
40:37I felt the engineer had the train under control.
40:42I felt he, in fact, was doing what was necessary to control the train at that point.
40:48I never felt at any point in time that I should pull the emergency brake.
40:54At that time, I didn't think that anything was wrong.
40:56That's the point I make, Mr. Smith, that when there's a problem with the radio, you've been trained over the
41:01years to observe the signals.
41:03And it would have been the last thing I would have done.
41:06He didn't pull the brake, he didn't pull the air, because he felt that it hadn't reached that point.
41:13Basically, that was his evidence, and I had a lot of difficulty with that, because if that point hadn't been
41:21reached, when was it going to be reached, if ever?
41:26Smith's contradictory testimony is complete.
41:30Judge Foisy is now ready to close his case, and lay the blame on those responsible for the disaster.
41:44The inquiry into one of the deadliest train crashes in Canada is complete.
41:49Twenty-three people were killed when a freight train crashed head-on into a passenger train near Hinton, Alberta.
41:56Chief Investigator René Foisy has explored every angle, from technical malfunction to human error.
42:03He's now ready to deliver his report on what went wrong that day.
42:09In his 205-page report, Foisy parcels out the blame, naming all the key offenders.
42:16Foisy writes that the train's engineer, Jack Hudson, failed to observe and obey light signals, commanding him to stop his
42:22train before it entered the single track.
42:28If Hudson was unable to do his job, brakeman Mark Edwards failed to intervene.
42:33He also ignored the light signals and didn't break the train before it entered the single track.
42:39Conductor Wayne Smith was guilty, too.
42:41He had failed to follow operating rules and pull the emergency brake when he couldn't contact the two men at
42:47the front of the train.
42:48With so many contradictions in his testimony, Foisy rules that the conductor's evidence is unreliable.
42:53I wasn't sure what had happened, and I went to my back desk, I jumped onto my cupola, and ran
43:05for...
43:07It seemed like we were just keeping going, there was no immediate stopping, the caboose kept sliding.
43:16Instead, Foisy emphasizes that Smith, like Edwards and Hudson, was dangerously tired that morning.
43:22I just wanted to get home, actually, at the time.
43:29But the crew aren't the only ones Foisy blames for the accident.
43:35According to the Foisy report, Jack Hudson may well have had a stroke or heart attack before the collision.
43:41But CN management had known about Hudson's medical record for years.
43:45He managed to accumulate, I think it was 40 or 50 demerits, and at 60, you're fired.
43:52But after he got to that level, there were some other infractions which weren't recorded.
44:00Foisy also calls attention to the rules that were routinely ignored, such as rigging the dead man's pedal and taking
44:06the train on the fly.
44:08The conclusion we came to is that there was a lot to be desired on the part of CN.
44:15And that, yes, there was certainly some laxness and some complacency when it came to these areas.
44:22There is a lesson to be learned here. It's that when you have rules, you obey the rules, and you
44:29enforce the rules.
44:31If it becomes too much of a fraternity, of a buddy-buddy system, it gets lax.
44:38And problems occur, and this tragedy was one of them.
44:43Foisy demands that CN improve its safety equipment, recommending that all trains be equipped with reset safety control technology.
44:53These systems are much more complicated than a dead man's pedal.
44:57If constant attention is not paid to the train, alarms sound and the train eventually shuts down.
45:04It's equipment which has proved valuable several times since the disaster.
45:08There was a study done with CN ten years after this accident.
45:14They found something like 90% of the train engineers saying that they had been woken by the alerting device
45:21at least once.
45:23In response to Foisy's report, CN Rail creates one of the most sophisticated fatigue countermeasures programs in the world.
45:31Train men are no longer on call seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
45:36Napping is no longer frowned upon.
45:39Rest houses have been created and improved, and locomotive cabs made more comfortable.
45:52For the victims of the Hinton disaster of 1986, changes to Canadian railroading come too late.
45:59I still remember the people that were killed in the accident and good friends I had on the railroad.
46:06And that really, it does bother me.
46:11Now it's 20 years nearly.
46:15And I'm still going strong.
46:18Very lucky.
46:20I don't equate it to luck, no.
46:23Too much of a tragedy to think about luck.
46:26There's too much hurt that happened inside of me.
46:29You can be going along in life, and then something can come along and just kind of destroy your very
46:37foundation,
46:38or shatter your very foundation.
46:42And through no fault of your own, but life has a habit of doing that.
46:48But the other thing I can share with them is that you can recover from it.
46:53There is a tomorrow.
46:55We will see you.
46:56I'm sorry.
47:09I don't know.
47:10But I'm sorry.
47:13I'm sorry.
47:14I don't know.
47:14I'm sorry.
47:16I'm sorry.
47:16I don't know.
47:16I don't know.
47:19I'm so sorry.