Wreck!: Canada's Worst Railway Accidents

A.A. den Otter is a professor of history at Memorial University of
Newfoundland and the author of The Philosophy of Railways.

Beginning with the crash of a Great Western express into a gravel train
at Baptiste Creek in October 1854, Hugh Halliday presents 30
well-written, terse accounts of the worst train wrecks in Canadian
railway history. To make the list, an accident had to have resulted in
at least 10 deaths, had to have occurred (with one exception) in Canada,
and had to have happened (with one exception) on a bona fide railway.
Although mechanical or technological failures were the primary cause of
some tragedies, 83 percent of the wrecks could be attributed to human
error. In that regard, the most recent crash—the disaster at Hinton in
February 1986, in which 23 people were killed—is a case in point. For
undetermined reasons, two very tired men in the cab of the lead
locomotive disregarded a clearly visible red signal, crossed an open
switch, and ran headlong into an oncoming Via passenger train. Equally
disturbing, the conductor, who was supposed to be on watch in the
caboose, never raised an alarm.

Well researched from newspaper accounts and subsequent inquiries, and
written with clarity and economy, Wreck! takes a hard look at the tragic
consequences of human error.