Suspicious fire leads to GO train delays out of Hamilton’s West Harbour station: Metrolinx

Commuters leaving Hamilton’s West Harbour GO Station faced major delays on Friday morning amid an arson investigation.

Media relations spokesperson Matt Llewellyn told Global News that CN Rail police are investigating a suspicious fire that destroyed a signal bungalow east of the station.

Initially, four trains using a layover facility in that area were delayed by 40 minutes or so while crews operated switches manually, but in an update on Global News Radio’s Good Morning Hamilton, Llewellyn said those delays were expected to be resolved by 8 a.m.

“The good news is our network operations team. They’ve been working really hard … to really isolate these delays to rush hour this morning,” Llewellyn said. “So the good news is if you did experience a bit of a delay this morning coming out of West Harbor along the Lakeshore West, we expect that your afternoon commute at this point in terms of this issue is going to be resolved for the most part.”

Llewellyn said the delays likely affected a few hundred people, adding the West Harbour station has been much busier ever since Metrolinx introduced hourly GO service in the fall.

There are still expected to be train delays for anyone heading to Niagara on Friday evening as a result of the damage caused by the fire.

Llewellyn said Metrolinx has hundreds of kilometres of open track across the system and while there is a “robust system” in place to monitor equipment, he acknowledges there could be gaps in what is picked up by that system — which is why he’s urging anyone who sees anything suspicious to contact Metrolinx’s operations line or police.