Crews are still cleaning a toppled train after 23 cars went off the tracks near Craven, Sask. on Friday.
The CP Rail train carrying potash was travelling southbound at about 40 kilometres an hour, according to Rob Johnston, a Transportation Safety Board manager.
“It went into emergency, which means likely that the train pulled apart, and at that time the crew inspected the train and found 23 cars had derailed,” he said.
READ MORE: Train carrying potash derails near Craven, Sask.
Johnston said investigators spent two days on site trying to figure out what happened.
“We did come across a piece of rail of interest that we’re going to be taking a closer look at,” he said.
Investigators are theorizing that a broken rail caused the accident, but more work still needs to be done to confirm this, Johnston said.
“Anytime you have a derailment of this magnitude, there’s always a chance that there could be something to be improved. At this point, we’re not there yet. We’re still looking at gathering some more information,” he said.
No one was injured and no potash entered the lake, Johnston said.
“This track was relatively new,” he said.
“They’d done some site mitigation with slope stability in the area. It was continuous welded rail which is relatively new, so there has been work put into this subdivision over the last number of years.”
The track was reopened to train traffic on Saturday morning.
Crews working on clearing the derailment estimated it will take at least two weeks to clean up the remaining cars.
Johnston said the Transportation Safety Board would try to complete its investigation as quickly as possible, but there is no timeline for the final report.
CP Rail said in a statement that all appropriate emergency notifications were made in a timely manner, and it was taking the incident extremely seriously. It also said the company would ensure the site is restored to the same condition or better as quickly as possible.
This is Saskatchewan’s fourth main track derailment this year. There were 9 last year.
The last major derailment happened near Clair, Sask. in 2014, when the community had to be evacuated. A CN train carrying dangerous goods went off the tracks because of a broken rail.
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