Details of Railway Accidents in the Ottawa Area

1951, February 11 - Derailment of ten freight cars at Pembroke, Canadian Pacific

From the Ottawa Citizen 12 February 1951: Pembroke - No injuries resulted but considerable damage was caused and the main line of the CPR blocked for several hours here yesterday, the result of a derailment of a freight train near the Pembroke Shook Mills, just inside western Pembroke limits. Ten box cars were derailed two of them overturned beside the track which happened about 7.45 a.m. Traffic along the transcontinental line was immediately halted and interrupted until late yesterday afternoon when wrecking crews completed clearing up the wreckage and repaired the damaged rails. Railway officials revealed that the accident occurred when a mechanical defect caused a broken arch-bar on the underside of one of the cars. Ten cars were derailed and the tracks torn up for several hundred feet.  Two of the derailed cars, the one with the defect and another, were overturned one on each sde of the right-of-way with the wheels torn off both. The officials revealed also that the train, eastbound at the time, was an extra freight under the charge of Conductor Tom Spooner of Smiths Falls.  They emphasized that no blame was attached to anyone with respect to the accident. One wrecking train and crew arrived from the west early yesterday morning while another from Smiths Falls reached the scene about noon and both worked rapidly to clear the line.  Eastbound trains were held at Chalk River, about 20 miles west of here, while those westbound were stopped at Pembroke.

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Updated January 2014