Via Rail derails west of Toronto

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tmbstn

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CP-24 (CTV) seems too have excellent coverage. I am picking up some (very little) EMS & ORNGE Helio's traffic from Kitchener-Waterloo.
 

shadetree1999

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Lots of traffic on Halton's system. Was drving through Burlington around 3:30 when the derailment happened. Listened for a couple of hours, shot some video of one of the two ornge air ambulance helicopters taking off from about 30 feet away. Well co-ordinated response all around. My heart goes out to the family and friends of the three via employees killed in the crash
 

VE3JSO

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after i posted i heard ornage from sarnia lambton but it was to much static to understand what they were saying
 

EJB

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I live within shouting distance of the accident. I was busy bbm'ng and emailing with friends as I was watching it all happen live.

At 3:30 my daughter and I pulled into our parking lot. She heard the sirens but we hear them all the time as the accident area is built up and 4 highways converge. There are constant sirens here.

10 min later I heard choppers. I was out walking my dog and I figured that the chopper was WESCAM's but surprisngly it was the ORNGE! That's when I knew enough to run up stairs and flip on the scanner.

It took Ornge about 5 tries to land. King Rd was supposed to have an underpass the bypass the trains and the city had to buy land to build for this. Its a good thing that the delay's happened because the land that was cleared for this was the landing strip for 3 Ornge choppers.

There were at least 3 CACC's helping out. Toronto Ems sent a bus, Hamilton was here along with Halton.

I saw the choppers come and go. I will post some pics I took of them when I have a chance.

Sadly, 3 VIA employees died. We all like to listen to 'action' but when you hear people dying like this only hearts of stone aren't saddened.

I am outside right now and there are cops blocking off King Road (not King Street as one media outlet called it) and there will be a lot of people working thru the night and day(s) to clean this up.

Thank goodness there weren't more casualties, there was a train that derailed in '08 in the same place.

Thank goodness that this wasn't a freight train carrying god knows what. If this happened on Saturday and there were dangerous chemicals exploding and leaking I am 500 meters away.... I don't even want to contemplate this.

And thank goodness to all the police, fire, EMS, hydro, rail, etc, etc staff working their butts off, many logging off their day shift 5 hrs late.

On a nite when spoiled athletes play basketball and show and when millions watch actors walk on a red carpet you quickly learn what is important and really, why do we care about these people. The real heroes were working their asses off today.

The media were slow to the scene. I don't know when CH got there but CP24 and Global took almost 2 hours.

All comms on Halton"s EDACS system were extremely busy
 

EJB

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animaljr43 said:
Is there a feed for this area?

no live feed for halton and i don't think any pro comms will any traffic on it

All comms here were in the clear as per usual. I imagine that a feed for the area would be great but after last summers incident in York there is no way I or anyone I know going to put up a feed here on this site.

Its bad enough sending hotshots about people dying IMO.
 

EJB

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shadetree1999 said:
Lots of traffic on Halton's system. Was drving through Burlington around 3:30 when the derailment happened. Listened for a couple of hours, shot some video of one of the two ornge air ambulance helicopters taking off from about 30 feet away. Well co-ordinated response all around. My heart goes out to the family and friends of the three via employees killed in the crash

Where were you located? I am 2 blocks to the south. I shot some pictures but no video.
 

shadetree1999

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EJB,we were near Brant and the QEW running some errands when it happened. When I saw the Ornge helicopters in the air, I parked at the McDonalds at King, and walked to where they were landing and taking off (King and the tracks, roughly). I only stayed long enough to get a video (with my cell phone) of one of them taking off, then we got out of the area and let the response people do what they do, but continued to listen till about 6pm. I could not resist the opportunity for some cool shots of the Ornge helicopter(s) in action despite my normal solid refusal to go anywhere near an event as it takes place. I normally have the MOH air frequencies locked out on my scanner, so I didn't hear any of their chatter, but lots on the Halton stuff.
 

EJB

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EJB,we were near Brant and the QEW running some errands when it happened. When I saw the Ornge helicopters in the air, I parked at the McDonalds at King, and walked to where they were landing and taking off (King and the tracks, roughly). I only stayed long enough to get a video (with my cell phone) of one of them taking off, then we got out of the area and let the response people do what they do, but continued to listen till about 6pm. I could not resist the opportunity for some cool shots of the Ornge helicopter(s) in action despite my normal solid refusal to go anywhere near an event as it takes place. I normally have the MOH air frequencies locked out on my scanner, so I didn't hear any of their chatter, but lots on the Halton stuff.

Cool! I was heading SB on Brant from Upper Middle and took Fairview West to Francis, then home.

MC D's is very easy to see from my balcony, we are in one of the brownish towers to the north of where you were.

My daughter and I heard the sirens and such but did not really think much of it. When I saw the Ornge chopper trying to land then it registered and on went the scanner.

From the stories I am reading, like the Sun, AP and Star; there was a sound right before the passengers cars left the tracks. The train itself was switching tracks at the time.
 

RadioDitch

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There is a live feed (not on Radioreference) for rail operations in the Hamilton-Burlington area fwiw for future reference. And as a railfan and someone with friends in engine service on both VIA and CN up there, thanks to all the posters in this thread for being respectful to the incident. It's a real freak tragedy.
 

EJB

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There is a live feed (not on Radioreference) for rail operations in the Hamilton-Burlington area fwiw for future reference. And as a railfan and someone with friends in engine service on both VIA and CN up there, thanks to all the posters in this thread for being respectful to the incident. It's a real freak tragedy.

It might be legal to post but unless it is a fire I couldnt bring this kind of event to anyones attention here, simply because people died.

Thats just me. To each their own.
 

VE3JSO

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It might be legal to post but unless it is a fire I couldnt bring this kind of event to anyones attention here, simply because people died.

Thats just me. To each their own.

only time i will post something like this on the breaking news if it already in the news and i stick to the facts
 

pathalogical

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I knew it wouldn't take long for the class action lawsuit to be announced. What kills me is that the mystery passengers that left without being treated or interviewed have suddenly made themselves known !
 
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