Dear Editor:
There are two rail yards. The CPR/CNR yard runs from roughly the Discovery Centre to the Fraser River bridge. The second one is the Surrey Rail Link yard and shops complex running from the Fraser River bridge to roughly the Queensborough Bridge.
The regulations are different for a federal carrier and a provincial carrier. CP and CN share the lower yard bordering the highrises paralleling the lead. The lead track has 10 or 12 switches into other tracks that go toward Stewardson Way. That causes noise problems for the residents, because it is right under their noses. Like Lac-Mégantic, another former CP rail yard, the geographic barriers confronting the railway from the beginning are still problematic today.
The New Westminster yard used to have a flooding problem, being at the bottom of the hill. When the high tide came up, the water rushed down from the rain weeks on end. The place was called "the pond." So that problem causing dangerous switching is under control. The upper yard never had the problem, however, the grade has caused many cars to slip away at different times. Today, derail switches are in place to derail the line of cars before things get out of hand.
Lac-Mégantic is similar to New Westminster yard as it is all manual switches and blocks. There is no centralized traffic control to electronically stop a train from a dispatcher's desk. Both are not mainline points and do not require regulations a major traffic yard has. Besides, with four railways in New West, the confusion over computer control would create collisions.
That is why the horns continually send signals from engine to crews and warn of movement hazards and direction. The huge noise of metal colliding as cars are buckled up or let go may be a neighbourhood nuisance, yet if it was not done there would be a huge, hazardous, toxic and combustible problem as cars and trains run blind.
The Lac-Megantic wreck was about as rare as the 1995 Hinton Rail disaster when a CN switcher came onto the mainline and met a high flying 60 m.p.h. VIA passenger train. Here the C.T.C. signals could not catch the speed of the freight in time. If this had been New Westminster the train would stop, a crew member would get off the engine and manually line the switch. The lesson here is, do not put too much trust in computers. The Hinton freight was lined up right electronically, but the actuality was far different. Both yards are part of the Greater Vancouver Regional Terminals and have very low speed restrictions, which makes motorists angry as a 30-car train may take half-hour or so to clear the crossing. That is rail safety.
There was never any compatibility between cars and trains. That makes the motorist the hazard most of the time.
Years ago railways had drop gates at crossings only to trap cars inside where the trains were. Today a piece of wood comes down, and lights blink and bells ring as cars go around them or through them.
The railways say what kind of a mental mind would drive in front of a moving train with all that noise. A train cannot protect itself from accidents, it has no steering wheel, it is a guided missile on the surface. It's very dangerous and beyond argument.
Bryan Vogler, by email
