Canada: QUEBEC: The Wreck of No. I I

At the tiny flag station of Wykes, C.N.R.’s No. 11, more than an hour late, slid to an unscheduled stop. Bitter cold (—35°) had forced down steam in the engine’s boilers; it would take time to get it up again. Because No. 21 was following on the same track, a brakeman set out to light warning flares and set torpedoes. But No. 21, pounding through the early morning fog, was dreadfully close behind. Before the brakeman could light a flare, it had plowed into No. 11.

The last car of the stalled train was a steel sleeper, and the steel held. Ahead was a wood-&-steel day coach; the steel sleeper drove into it like a battering ram. Forty-eight hours later, after relief trains and planes had got to Wykes, near Parent in northern Quebec’s lonely logging country, the deaths stood at nine. More than 50 had been injured. It was Quebec’s worst railroad wreck, in number of fatalities, in twelve years.