The Canoe River train crash occurred on November 21, 1950, near Valemount in eastern British Columbia, Canada. A westbound troop train and the eastbound Canadian National Railway Continental Limited collided head-on. The collision killed 21 people, including 17 Canadian soldiers en route to the Korean War and the two-man locomotive crew of each train. A telegraph operator was charged with manslaughter; the Crown alleged that he was negligent in passing an incomplete message. His family hired his Member of Parliament, John Diefenbaker, as defence counsel, and obtained Atherton’s acquittal.
About Canoe River train crash in brief
The Canoe River train crash occurred on November 21, 1950, near Valemount in eastern British Columbia, Canada. A westbound troop train and the eastbound Canadian National Railway Continental Limited collided head-on. The collision killed 21 people, including 17 Canadian soldiers en route to the Korean War and the two-man locomotive crew of each train. The post-crash investigation found that the order given to the troop train differed from the intended message. A telegraph operator was charged with manslaughter; the Crown alleged that he was negligent in passing an incomplete message. His family hired his Member of Parliament, John Diefenbaker, as defence counsel, and obtained Atherton’s acquittal. A number of monuments honour the dead. After the accident, the CNR installed block signals on the stretch of track on which the crash occurred. The railway later realigned the main line in that area, eliminating a sharp curve that prevented crews from seeing oncoming trains. The CNR used the part-wooden cars only for the transportation of soldiers; other passengers were no longer carried in them. After 1947 Dugald rail accident, Board of Transport Commissioners had ordered that wooden passenger coaches not be placed between all-steel cars. Under the terms of that decision, General Order Number 707, the wooden cars with steel underframes did not count as \”wooden car\”.
CNR dispatcher A. E. Tisdale meant to send both trains identical orders to \”meet\” on a mostly single-track section. His intended order read \”Psgr Extra 3538 West meet No. 2 Eng 6004 at Cedarside and No 4 Eng 6057 Gosnell.’ The words ‘at Cedarside’ did not appear in the order as copied down by Atheron to be handed to the train crew. According to Hugh A. Halliday in his history of Canadian railroad wrecks, “it would have been one man’s word against the other, but the Blue River operator had been on the line at the same time.” The words ‘Cedar’ were not in the original order, but in a later version of the order, which was passed to the Continental and to Train No. 4. As the full order had been passed, its crew expected to meet the troopTrain, 43 miles eastbound from Blue River; the crew aboard the troop Train were not aware of anything wrong. Both trains were travelling at moderate speeds and attempted to negotiate a sharp curve. The troop train passed the Continental, and the Continental passed the trooptrain. Neither train crew, who responded to his frantic signals with a friendly wave, knew anything was wrong. The train was travelling from Camp Shilo, Manitoba to Fort Lewis, Washington. It was carrying 23 officers and 315 men of 2nd Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery for deployment to the Korea War, a movement dubbed Operation Sawhorse.
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This page is based on the article Canoe River train crash published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 23, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
