Running Trades - a Voice for Canadian Railway Labour

By Richard Warnica, edmontonjournal.com

EDMONTON — It could have been so much worse.

An 85-car train slams into an 11,000-kilogram machine and no one gets hurt. The train knocks the machine from the tracks and clears a highway overpass before 13 cars derail. And no one gets hurt.

It's been 18 months since someone stole a large piece of construction equipment, drove it across a farmer's field and parked it on the CN tracks in Strathcona County, just east of Clover Bar Road.

Eighteen months and police now believe they know who did it, if not exactly why.

Late last month, Strathcona County RCMP arrested Edward Arthur Vallee in connection with the crime. They also put out an arrest warrant for Ian Douglas Gillie.

The men, both 26, have been charged with mischief endangering life, mischief over $5,000 and theft over $5,000.

Valllee was released on bail on Dec. 30. He is scheduled to appear in court Feb. 3.

Police think Gillie is still in Alberta and hope he'll turn himself in when he sees his name in the news.

Outside the Strathcona County RCMP headquarters on Tuesday, Const. Wally Henry explained how, after more than a year of searching, it was a tip from the public that led to the arrests.

"These two people are not known to us," Henry said. "They weren't on our radar."

Henry said Vallee has been cooperative since his arrest. He said police believe the two men had been drinking that night.

"I don't know the actual state of their sobriety," he said. "But it's fair to say alcohol was involved."

The near-catastrophic crash happened just after midnight on July 10, 2008.

The 85-car train, mostly flatbeds filled with consumer goods, was travelling west from Wainwright to Edmonton.

The train's engineer told The Journal after the accident he saw the machine on the tracks from 30 car-lengths away. Both he and the conductor grabbed their emergency brakes, but it was too late.

The train bashed into the machine and stayed on the tracks across a 90-metre overpass before losing some of its cars.

"The whole incident cost, if you want to put a price tag on it, more than a million dollars," Henry said on Tuesday.

Still, he said, it could have been worse.

"The location of that overpass, the time of year ... the potential for it to have been catastrophic was definitely there."

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