Original subtitles

An enormous freight train is out of control,

tearing through the Canadian Rockies.

The crew does nothing to slow the train's terrifying speed.

Jack? Are you there?

Charging the other way,

a passenger train, with more than a hundred people on board.

Front end. Jack, come in!

Oh my God!

Mayday, mayday, we're doing 90 miles an hour.

Out of control.

Take a life jacket!

Where's the coast guard?

Don't let go!

It is one of the most spectacular train rides in the world.

Every year, thousands of people take the slow and easy way

through Canada's Rocky Mountains.

Avoiding traffic, they take the train

and leave the driving to somebody else.

In late winter 1986,

a gentle trip through the Rockies will end tragically.

It was like a mini atom bomb.

And all of a sudden, it ignited - woof!

I'm going to help you.

I could hear the woman screaming,

you know...

to save her baby.

An investigation makes shocking discoveries

about the Canadian railroad industry.

At that time, I didn't think that anything was wrong.

February 8th, 1986.

Spectacular northern lights dance across the sky

over Edson Alberta, in Western Canada.

Driving freight trains has been a lifelong dream

for 48-year-old Canadian National Railways engineer Jack Hudson.

But after 16 years on the job,

he knows all too well that it can be a grueling career.

Because Canadian freight trains travel such vast distances,

up to 12 local crews may be used

in the course of one cross-country journey.

Hudson works a mountainous stretch of track through Alberta,

running between his home town of Jasper and Edson to the east.

Like many train men, Hudson works a regular beat.

Driving over the same stretch of track,

then turning around again with another train day after day.

At around 11 pm last night,

Hudson got off the freight train from Jasper

and spent the night here,

in the company bunkhouse at Edson.

Now he's up again - after just three and a half hours of sleep,

ready to return to Jasper.

At the station, he's joined by his brakeman.

Like Hudson, 25-year-old Mark Edwards lives in Jasper.

And like Hudson, he hasn't slept very much.

Did you get some rest?

Not much. Got a touch of the flu.

I could use a full night's sleep.

Hudson and Edwards will ride up front, in the first engine.

Hudson drives the train, while Edwards keeps an eye on the brakes,

and pitches in if Hudson needs any help.

Known to his fellow rail men as Smitty,

33-year-old Wayne Smith is Hudson's conductor.

He's the last of the three-man crew

in charge of the freight train this morning.

Smitty.

Smith rides in the caboose, the last car in the train.

He acts as an extra set of eyes,

making sure the men in the front end

know what's going on behind them.

The three men are long-time employees of Canadian National, or CN, Rail.

And all of them have been up and down this length of track

countless times before.

The train they are riding today is enormous.

CN train 413 is just under two kilometres long.

The cars are filled with a collection of grain,

metal pipes and chemicals.

It tips the scales at more than 11 million kilos.

As the freighter rolls into Edson,

it slows to a crawl, but doesn't stop.

Getting it started again would take time.

and the crew wants their trip to begin as soon as possible.

Hudson and Edwards take the train 'on the fly',

boarding it as it rolls slowly along.

According to CN Rail's code of conduct, this is illegal,

but it's something crews do routinely.

With the caboose still nearly 2 km away,

Smith stands by the track to inspect the cargo

as it crawls by.

He makes sure there's nothing obviously wrong with the freight,

or the cars carrying it.

All set, Jack. Clear signal leaving Edson.

Clear signal leaving Edson.

Another part of Smith's job is to stay in touch

with the front end of the train.

He's supposed to make sure they're alert throughout the journey.

Now with the caboose pulling alongside the platform,

Smith climbs aboard.

Okay, he's got the brakes off, you're good to go.

See ya later.

At 6:40 am, Hudson pushes the throttle.

The freight train picks up speed

as its 8000 horsepower diesel engines open up.

The CN freight train begins the long haul west to Jasper.

The men are going home.

Dispatcher to 413.

Good morning, dispatcher.

Good morning, Jack.

But Hudson isn't sure exactly how long his train is,

or precisely what he is carrying.

I'll get a measure at Medicine Lodge, here.

I haven't had a chance yet.

Oh, that's uh...

You got pretty well all grain cars, eh?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

It should be the right length then.

OK, OK, thanks.

As 413 roars west,

a VIA passenger train speeds east on the same track.

VIA Rail's Super Continental passenger train #4

is cruising toward Edmonton, Alberta.

More than a 100 passengers are enjoying

the spectacular scenery as it cruises through

the rugged Canadian Rockies.

36-year-old Jaimie Heyd is a car assembly operator.

He's headed home to Ontario after a two-week visit

to his family in Vancouver.

It's a very very small community.

You're in close proximity

with a lot of people very very suddenly,

and so there is a lot of people we got to meet

and got to interact with.

I remember there was a couple of ladies that we met over dinner.

One was very very pregnant.

While some passengers are still sleeping,

Heyd goes into the Day Coach to do some reading

before breakfast.

It's the fourth car in the train.

I remember this lady and she had a little boy with her,

about three years old or whatever,

and he was quite in awe, the little child was quite in awe of the scenery.

So I sat down and I lifted the shade a little bit,

so I could get some of the daylight coming in,

and I started to read a pocket novel.

Several cars behind Heyd is 61-year-old Assistant Conductor Herbert Timpe,

an old hand on the Canadian passenger line.

He's been riding this piece of track for 7 years.

I had to be the assistant conductor

and look after the passengers on that train.

Next stop, Hinton.

The passenger train is pulling into Hinton.

The freight train is just about to reach

Hargwen station, 20 km east.

Here, the rail line briefly splits in two,

so trains can pass each other.

413 will take the upper track,

while the passenger train passes below it.

As Hudson approaches the split in the tracks,

traffic signal lights tell him to slow down.

Smitty, we've gotta an approach limited signal at Hargwen.

Next station, Dalehurst. Over.

Head end of 413. Approach limited at Hargwen.

Next station, Dalehurst. Out.

These are the last words these men will ever exchange.

A dispatcher in Edmonton sets a switch,

and 413 is forced onto the upper track.

The Via passenger train arrives at Hinton station at 8:20 am.

On board, 64 year old Martin Pederson settles down

to breakfast in a downstairs lounge of the dome car.

He's feeling rested after a good night's sleep.

A former World War II fighter pilot,

Pederson has a lot of experience with locomotives.

Over the course of the war,

he blew up 36 enemy trains in France.

The night before, Pederson swapped war stories

with another veteran he met on board.

61-year-old Kenneth Cuttle is a former Royal Marine.

It was February.

I was going to Edmonton to look for another job.

Like Pederson, Cuttle also fought behind enemy lines in World War II.

Cuttle and Pederson are survivors.

Let's go upstairs to the dome car,

have a look around, see what's happening.

The train was pretty comfortable you know.

Not many people on board.

I said: "Let's go up to the dome car",

because it was just coming light

and we could see lots of things

we might not get another chance to see.

We were in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

There are now 115 people on board.

But the train will never make it to Edmonton.

And the passengers and crew enjoying the early morning trip

will soon be fighting for their lives.

It's a clear, sunny morning

on board a passenger train in Western Canada.

Breakfast is being served

as the train rolls east through the Canadian Rockies.

Just 15 kilometers away,

an 11 million kilo freight train, CN 413,

rumbles down the track towards it.

With diesel engines still pounding at full throttle,

it's pulling 113 rail cars of grain and hazardous material.

From the outside, everything looks normal.

But what's going on inside the lead engine of 413

is about to become one of the greatest mysteries

in Canadian railroad history.

Freight trains and passenger trains

often travel on the same track.

For short sections, the track splits,

so trains heading in opposite directions can pass safely.

Today, 413 is on the upper branch.

Signals tell the freight train to slow, then stop completely.

The signals will only turn green again

once the passenger train has passed safely by below.

Then the freight train can rejoin the main line.

But 413 isn't slowing down.

It's now heading downhill

and it charges through the warning lights.

If it doesn't stop soon,

it will return to the main line at full speed,

straight into the path of the passenger train.

Unaware of the bizarre behavior of 413,

the passenger train continues east.

Martin Pederson gets his breakfast.

Hi!

Up ahead, the freighter thunders through

the last set of light signals,

ignoring three red lights that command it to stop.

It slams back onto the main line.

It's traveling 95 km/h

and weighs more than 11 million kilos.

And still, it doesn't slow down.

Herbert Timpe sits to relax.

Ken Cuttle has a clear view of the railway ahead.

I got in a conversation with an English guy

and he had his back to the front.

And I was looking over his shoulder forward,

the way the train was going.

There was a flickering light in the distance.

And not knowing the track layout, I thought,

"Oh there must be another line, and if it's another train,

it's going to go past us", you know.

Just as I was reading the pocket novel,

one of the girls from the partier group

happened to just walk past me.

Oh my God...

Oh my God!!!

And then...

Boom.

The trains collide like two charging rams

at a combined speed of nearly 200 km/h.

Passengers are rocked by one collision after another

as 70 freight cars pile onto the wreckage.

Like an incoming wave.

Grain cars, long pipes, 3 foot in diameter,

30 feet in length, you name it,

and these were flying through the air

like toys!

Thrown from the tracks by the force of the collision,

one freight car flies through the air,

smashing to a stop of the Via train...

The whole world seemed to explode.

It was like a mini-atom bomb.

It was a big mushroom of black smoke.

Then, everything was dark.

I could no longer breathe

because everything was filled with smoke.

I thought I was going to die.

And the very thing that happened was...

I just resigned myself to that.

I'd been working about 37 years on the railroad

and I never never seen anything so bad.

The wave of metal, grain cars

stopped just where the dome car was.

If it had gone another 30 feet,

it would have covered us as well.

In the same car, one deck below,

Martin Pederson struggles to escape,

but he can barely see

what's happening in front of him.

The window beside him shattered during impact,

filling his eyes with broken glass.

Almost 2 km behind the engine,

the caboose of train 413 finally lurches to a stop.

Conductor Wayne Smith sees a ball of fire

glowing in the distance.

But he has no idea how bad the situation is.

Front end 413.

I think we're in the bush or we're derailed.

There's a big explosion up here

and we have chemicals on the train,

so stay away from it.

Stay away from the dangerous goods.

But all Smith gets in reply is an ominous silence.

Passengers continue to struggle to escape

the mangled wreck of their train as the smoke thickens.

I was trained well in the Royal Marines to survive,

and to act spontaneously.

There was a window at the back of the dome car

and it was all cracked, and I just jumped on the seat

and smashed my head in through the glass roof,

and shouted: "Come on, let's get out!"

Cuttle and others jump from the car.

I looked back, and all of a sudden it ignited - woof!

Down below in the lounge car,

Martin Pederson also manages to escape.

But others aren't so lucky.

Many are still trapped in the burning cars,

including passenger Jamie Heyd.

The roof of the coach had been crunched down.

I'd lost my glasses.

I couldn't see, I couldn't breathe,

and here was the porter that had been behind the snack bar,

had opened up this exit way

and he had vamoosed out through it.

And I took off behind him too.

Snap out of it! He was in shock.

Hey! Snap out of it!

"Hey buddy, pull it together here.

There's people in here.

We got to do something about it." But...

Half blind without his glasses,

Heyd goes back inside, trying to help others out of the wreck.

413 here dispatcher...

We got a big explosion up here...

Back in the caboose, Smith is talking to the freight train's dispatcher

some 285 km away in Edmonton.

We better get a doctor out here.

Herb Timpe, the assistant conductor on the passenger train,

can hear the conversation on his radio and breaks in.

And passenger coaches all over the ditch.

And get an ambulance!

And there's a whole bunch of cars on fire.

You get that, dispatcher?

We need to find the fire department here very badly.

Some coaches are trapped with passengers inside, they're burning...

I don't think the engineers lived through this one.

It's a real mess.

OK. That's right on the switch at Dalehurst, eh?

Yes. I'm gonna walk up there

and see if I can be of any assistance.

What was the signal at Dalehurst when your head-end called it?

Pardon me?

What was the signal on that signal at Dalehurst?

Well I was callin' him for the signal at Dalehurst

quite a few times,

but uh I kept calling him and there was no answer.

Well, it should have been red on the panel.

Well he must have ran it then, dispatcher

because I could not get a hold of him. I tried and I tried.

OK, alright.

Back at the head of the passenger train,

Jamie Heyd tries to save who he can.

Are you OK? I'm going to help you.

Heyd can hear the screams of men and women

trapped in the flames.

I could hear the woman I had dinner with the night before,

screaming, you know uh...

to save her baby.

Heyd was not able to save the mother and her child,

they are out of reach under debris.

That was... that was difficult.

People who were trapped and couldn't get out, screaming,

screaming like you'd never heard.

One guy knew that his wife was trapped

and he went back in and died with her.

Another woman in the carriage under where we were

had most of her leg cut off.

James Heyd courageously decides to go back inside.

The fire is a scorching 660 degrees,

but Heyd tries to save one more life.

There was the chap right in front of me there,

and it was the chap I had dinner with the night before.

And all of a sudden the flames came and consumed him.

He just sat up and rubbed his head.

There was nothing more we could do for him.

Anybody in front of me in that coach was dead.

For whatever the reasons, it wasn't my time to go then,

for whatever the reasons.

Wayne Smith is devastated.

He can't reach his two friends at the front of the freight train,

and he can't understand what happened

to cause such an enormous disaster.

In Western Canada,

a freight train has smashed head-on into a passenger train

carrying more than a hundred people.

In the minutes after the collision,

survivors are dragging themselves

from the burning wreckage

while others are still trapped inside.

One of the girls that had been in the car in the morning,

and I looked at her and I said: "I'm sorry to tell you, your..."

He had no choice but to tell her

what happened to her friend in the train.

...your friend was in the car here.

She died trapped in the burning debris.

I felt like the worst person in the world,

because I had to tell her.

If I could have taken back that one second in time

and not tell her, you know.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Mark Linnell

is one of the first to arrive on the scene.

I was told there was a train derailment,

not a train crash.

I mean that's a double whammy.

The RCMP officer came.

He could hardly speak, his mouth dropped open

and he said: "I can't believe what I'm witnessing."

It's a horrifying scene.

Pictures taken shortly after the crash show utter devastation.

I mean I was flabbergasted.

I just couldn't believe it.

And I... instantly.

That's quite the thing to see.

The collision is 18 km from the town of Hinton.

It takes emergency crews some 45 minutes to get there.

I was in the marines in England for 14 years

and I'd seen a lot of disasters,

man-made disasters, terrorist bombs,

and I thought I'd seen it all.

There was a lot of blunt force trauma, of course,

flying glass, burns.

And then I saw

what appeared to be two bodies

in the restaurant car hugging each other.

We found out later it was a man and a wife,

and this was one heck of a shock.

As Linnell is escorting survivors away from the site,

he sees a lone man with a radio coming down the track.

Hey, how's the front end doing?

What's your name?

Smith is about to learn that his colleagues aboard his train are dead.

Like what happened?

Like, did they make contact with the...?

We're still under the investigation

and there's not a lot that I can tell you right now.

Okay, so they still might be... I mean...?

No, I'm really sorry...

He was distraught and shaken.

His train is wrecked, with all his people dead.

The Hinton train disaster is the worst railway accident

to strike Canada in 35 years.

More that 30 million dollars in property are destroyed,

23 people are dead, and 71 others are severely injured.

Wayne Smith is the only surviving crew member of the CN train.

The only man who may be able to explain

how a 11 million kilo freighter

plowed head first into an oncoming passenger train.

What he knows could be critical

to unraveling the cause of the disaster.

Two days after the collision,

the Alberta Government establishes an Official Commission of Inquiry.

And the Honorable Mr. Justice Rene P. Foisy leads the investigation.

Judge Foisy is a justice of the Alberta Court of Appeal.

It was reasonably simple, I mean: What caused the accident?

But it turned out to be a lot more complicated than that

because there were no easy answers as to what caused the accident.

Freight and passenger trains routinely use the same tracks without incident.

What was different this time?

Over the next 11 months, Foisy calls on 150 witnesses

and specialists to help him find out.

I think what has most surprised me is the complex procedures,

the equipment, the overall complexity

that we have to look at in running a railroad,

and what goes on in running a railroad.

While Conductor Smith recovers from the accident,

Foisy gets to work.

He begins by studying the signals

that should have told the freight train to stop.

If they weren't working, the crew on 413

may not have thought they needed to slow down.

CN did a very in-depth test

on the signal system

and it was determined that

it was performing properly.

We went further.

We hired our own independent experts to test the systems.

The switches which operate the signal lights

were frozen in position after the accident.

Electrical engineer Eugene Kowch was hired to read them.

Perhaps a mechanical fault in the system

had turned them green,

telling the freight to speed through.

A fault does not give a positive green light

to any situation,

so if there was a fault in any control part of the system,

it would have forced everything to go to red

which meant the passenger train would have stopped

and would have forced the freight train to stop.

If a mechanical problem wasn't the cause,

there was a more chilling possibility.

Perhaps someone set the freight train lights to green on purpose,

causing the two trains to collide.

Kowch dismissed that idea too.

To do that would mean that somebody would have to actually go there

and really maliciously change things,

and there was no sign of any tampering on any mechanisms.

Basically our conclusion,

we felt the system was sound and was safe.

Foisy believes the lights were red,

but the freight train ignored them.

Perhaps another mechanical fault was behind the crash.

Well I was calling him for the signal at Dalehurst, quite a few times.

In his statement after the crash,

Conductor Wayne Smith told Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers

that something was wrong with his radio that morning.

...because I could not get a hold of him.

I tried and I tried.

Maybe the front of the train was having mechanical problems,

but they weren't able to get in contact with Smith.

Joseph Hebert examines the portable radios the crew used.

The first test was with the radio

that was on the train that was in the accident at Hinton.

The radio performed to specifications.

But even if the radios themselves were working,

there could be another problem.

Many employees CN claim there are places along the tracks

where radio communication is impossible - so-called dead spots.

And it's not a dead spot that's there 365 days a year.

The possibility was also examined and dismissed.

Sometimes you can't.

Some radios are stronger. Some are weaker.

The second test done, as far as communications

between the locomotive and the caboose,

was done with the same type of radio as was used

at the time the accident took place.

The field tests with that type of radio

had satisfactory performance.

The evidence was pretty clear

and we concluded that there were no dead spots.

One other possible explanation is examined.

Natural phenomena like the Northern lights

can also affect radio performance.

Uh, I'll get a measure at Medicine Lodge--

Northern lights can build up

very high currents in communication lines.

Anything hooked up to a radio can pick it up.

My determination of it was that they were not a factor.

If the signals were red,

and the radios were working, why had the train crashed?

Foisy examines an ingenious piece of technology:

the Hot Box Detector.

Sitting beside the track, hotboxes monitor

the temperature of a train's wheels and axles.

They also record the speed of trains as they roar by.

When Foisy and his advisors examine the hot box data,

they make a telling discovery.

When the front of the freight train passed

the hot box detector just after Hargwen,

it was traveling a little over 60 km/h.

But by the time the caboose passed it,

the train was going more than 74 km/h.

Despite the signals telling it to slow down,

the train was speeding up.

For the last 5 miles,

we were able to determine that the freight train

was going at least 59 Mph,

perhaps as high as 60 or 61.

There were no break applications before the crash as well.

The crew let the train travel too fast.

They did not head signals to stop.

And they never applied the brakes.

It all points to a train that was out of control.

Why there were no brake application?

It's difficult to understand.

Oh my God!!!

With mechanical problems ruled out,

Foisy begins to examine the crew of the freight train.

Perhaps there is something about engineer Jack Hudson,

who was in charge of the train,

that could explain what happened that day.

As Foisy begins sifting through Hudson's medical records

and interviewing his family,

he makes a disturbing discovery.

A train collision in Western Canada

has killed 23 people.

Another 71 are injured.

The man leading the inquiry into the disaster

has ruled out mechanical problems.

Judge Rene Foisy now takes a closer look at Jack Hudson,

the 16-year veteran who was driving the freight train.

When Foisy and the commission review Hudson's medical files,

they are shocked by what they discover.

Mister Hudson was a man who was sick.

He was an alcoholic.

He had high-blood pressure, which was problematic.

He had diabetes.

He had a pancreatic attack

the summer before this accident.

He had to wear a colostomy for a number of months.

Foisy wonders if this long list of illnesses could somehow

have led to the train crash.

The engineer Jack Hudson had been killed outright in the crash

and had severe injuries.

So we couldn't determine

whether there has been a catastrophic medical event

whether he'd had a heart attack for example or a stroke

which had incapacitated him,

but we were able to do toxicology

and there was no alcohol or drugs present.

He did have a lot of health problems

and he had some problems at home.

That these problems at home appeared to be on the mend,

and that he was not the kind of man who,

if he was going to commit suicide,

would take 23 people with him and injure another 70,

some of them very very seriously,

so we discounted that possibility of a suicide.

If it wasn't suicide,

if Hudson did have a stroke or heart attack at the controls,

why didn't his brakeman Mark Edwards take any action?

Investigators come up with one plausible answer.

Did you get some rest?

Not much. Got a touch of the flu.

Could use a full night's sleep.

Perhaps Edwards had been asleep on the job.

Dr. Alison Smiley is an expert on sleep and fatigue.

Jack Hudson, he had had at the very most

before he went on duty that day, three and a half hours of sleep.

And that is if he slept from the last moment

somebody saw him till the moment

somebody next saw him again. Three and a half hours.

The brakeman said had a touch of the flu,

and he had 5 hours of sleep the night before.

Wayne Smith, similarly, had had insufficient sleep,

about five hours before the collision.

As the freight train passed the signals telling it to stop,

the entire crew may have been fast asleep.

You could work at any time of the day,

so one day you might start at 4 o'clock in the morning,

the next day you start at 2 in the afternoon.

Their hours were so erratic

that they were continually in a jet lag state.

Because their physiology was never fully adjusted

to any particular working hours.

When it comes to staying alert, train engineers face many challenges,

including long rides up and down the same stretch of track.

The tracks going by one after the other.

It's a very soporific situation to work in,

and easy to see how somebody,

no matter how motivated,

could fall asleep.

At the time, trains were equipped with safety devices

that will automatically stop a train if the engine man died

or fell asleep, the so-called Dead Man's Pedal.

Basically, the engineer is supposed to keep

his foot on the pedal.

And while his foot is on the pedal,

the train won't stop.

If that pedal isn't depressed,

then it will, after a number of seconds,

give a warning, which is quite audible,

and if nothing happens then, it will stop the train.

But Foisy discovers that for many train men,

disabling the dead man's pedal is standard practice.

One of the excuses that was given

by the engineers was that, to go long distances,

having to keep your foot on that pedal

was very uncomfortable.

And so that they would sometimes

put something on the pedal,

a lunch box or something heavy enough to keep it depressed

so that they could stretch their legs.

Unfortunately, what was happening,

this pedal was being depressed for long long periods of time.

But even if Edwards and Hudson had fallen asleep

at the front of the train,

and the dead man's pedal was rigged,

Conductor Wayne Smith at the back

could still have prevented the disaster.

Almost two months into the Foisy inquiry,

Smith takes the stand.

Doctors had kept him from testifying earlier,

saying he was too traumatized by the accident.

Now, for the first time,

investigators will hear Smith

reconstruct events on board his train

in the moments leading up to the disaster.

I was sitting looking out the back of the train

from my desk when we passed mile board 169 -

that's the uh, that's the landmark

that I used to initiate a call to the engineer to ask

for the display at the Dalehurst approach signal.

Head end of 413, what indication do you have

at Dalehurst approach signal 1703? Over.

The front end of the train is supposed to respond,

letting Smith know that they've seen the signal lights

telling them to slow down.

Head of 413, can you hear me? Over.

I probably called him three or four times.

I didn't get a response on my gray radio.

There was something wrong with it.

What's the indication at signal 1703? Over.

It's a surprising piece of testimony.

Foisy already knows the radios were working fine.

When Smith is asked how fast he thought the train was going

before the collision, Foisy gets another surprise.

I felt the front end give a light brake application on the caboose.

Coming around the curve,

I felt that we were doing track speed of about 50 Mph or less.

But according to the hot box detectors,

the train was traveling almost 16 km/h over track speed,

and there was never any application of the brakes.

I went to my red radio

and I tried to get a hold of him, on it.

Jack, how is the Dalehurst approach signal 1703?

I was calling him on channel 1 three or four times

and there was no answer,

so I tried to get a hold of him on different channels.

But once again, Smith's testimony doesn't add up.

Foisy has heard from other train men

who were monitoring their radios in the area that day.

No one heard Smith call.

Smith says he was still trying to contact Hudson

when the end of the train raced past signals

telling it to slow down.

Jack!

As an experienced train man,

Smith knows that the next set of lights will likely be a triple red,

telling the train to stop.

He was getting no answer,

and the train wasn't slowing down.

An emergency brake cord was in easy reach,

but Smith never pulled it.

Jack, are you there?

With Hudson mysteriously silent,

Smith says he does nothing,

but continue to call the front end.

Front end. Jack come in?

Why in the circumstances that you've described,

did you not pull the brake?

I felt the engineer had the train under control.

I felt that he in fact, was doing what was necessary

to control the train at that point.

I never felt at any point in time

that I should pull the emergency brake.

At that time I didn't think that anything was wrong.

That's the point I make, Mr Smith.

That when there is a problem with the radio,

you have been trained over the years

to observe the signals.

It would have been the last thing I would have done.

He didn't pull the brake, he didn't pull the air,

because he felt it hadn't reached that point.

Basically that was his evidence

and I had a lot of difficulty with that

because if it... if that point hadn't been reached,

when was it going to be reached, if ever?

Smith's contradictory testimony is complete.

Judge Foisy is now ready to close his case

and lay the blame on those responsible for the disaster.

The inquiry into one of the deadliest train crashes in Canada is complete.

23 people were killed when a freight train crashed

head on into a passenger train near Hinton, Alberta.

Chief investigator Rene Foisy has explored every angle -

from technical malfunction to human error.

He is now ready to deliver his report

on what went wrong that day.

In his 205-page report,

Foisy parcels out the blame, naming all the key offenders.

Foisy writes that the train's engineer, Jack Hudson,

failed to observe and obey light signals commanding him

to stop his train before it entered the single track.

If Hudson was unable to do his job,

brakeman Mark Edwards failed to intervene.

He also ignored the light signals

and didn't brake the train

before it entered the single track.

Conductor Wayne Smith was guilty too.

He had failed to follow operating rules

and pull the emergency brake

when he couldn't contact the two men

at the front of the train.

In a statement to police,

he had even suggested

that he thought they were sleeping.

I said that my head end was asleep.

Do you recall making that response, sir?

Yes, I do.

With so many contradictions in his testimony,

Foisy rules that the conductor's evidence is unreliable.

I wasn't sure what had happened,

and uh, I went to my back desk,

I'd jumped down my cupola and ran for...

it seemed like we were just keeping going.

There was no immediate stopping.

The caboose kept sliding.

Instead, Foisy emphasizes that Smith,

like Edwards and Hudson,

was dangerously tired that morning.

I just wanted to get home, actually, at the time.

But the crew aren't the only ones

Foisy blames for the accident.

According to the Foisy report,

Jack Hudson may well have had a stroke or heart attack

before the collision,

but CN management had known about Hudson's medical record for years.

He managed to accumulate, I think it was 40 or 50 demerits

and at 60 you're fired.

But after he got to that level,

there were some other infractions

which weren't recorded.

Foisy also calls attention to the rules

that were routinely ignored,

such as rigging the dead man's pedal

and taking the train on the fly.

The conclusion we came to was that there was a lot to be desired

on the part of CN,

and that yes, there was certainly

some laxness

and some complacency

when it came to these areas.

Uh, I'll get a measure at Medicine Lodge here.

I haven't had a chance yet.

Oh that's uh...

You've got pretty well all grain cars, eh?

Yeah, I think so.

There is a lesson to be learned here.

It's that when you have rules,

you obey the rules and you enforce the rules.

If it becomes too much of a fraternity

and a buddy-buddy system,

it gets lax.

And problems occur,

and this tragedy was one of them.

Foisy demands that CN improve its safety equipment,

recommending that all trains be equipped

with Reset Safety Control technology.

These systems are much more complicated

than a dead man's pedal.

If constant attention is not paid to the train,

alarms sound, and the train eventually shuts down.

It's equipment which has proved

valuable several times since the disaster.

There was a study done with CN,

10 years after this accident.

They found something like 90% of the train engineers

saying that they had been woken by the alerting device

at least once.

In response to Foisy's report,

CN Rail creates one of the most sophisticated

Fatigue Countermeasures Programs in the world.

Train men are no longer on call

seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Napping is no longer frowned upon.

Rest houses have been created and improved

and locomotive cabs made more comfortable.

For the victims of the Hinton disaster of 1986,

changes to Canadian railroading come too late.

I still remember the people

that were killed in the accident,

and the good friends I had on the railroad.

And that's really...

It does bother me.

Now it's 20 years nearly,

and I'm still going strong.

Very lucky.

I don't equate it to luck, no.

Too much of a tragedy to think about luck.

There's too much hurt that happened inside of me.

It took me quite a while to rebuild my sanity again.

I got over it fairly quickly, and got on with my life.

There may be lots of other people who weren't as lucky.

You can be going along in life

and then something comes along

and just kinda destroys your very foundation,

or shatters your very foundation.

And through no fault of your own,

but life has a habit of doing that.

But the other thing I can share is that you can recover from it.

There is a tomorrow.

difuze