Caption: Having grown up in Summerhill, and lived there in more recent years frequently as well, there were times I pondered on the idea of what if? What if a train on the CP North Toronto Sub just a couple hundred feet from my house derailed? Although a kilometer west of my location, the question was answered, thankfully not catastrophically. CP 235's power was running light to West Toronto Yard around 5am and the crew missed the stop signal at Howland, and ended up taking out the last cars of CP 118. 235 hit the ground, but the ballast and adjacent track rails managed to stop the units several feet short of the Howland Avenue bridge. Had 235 been a full manifest, this likely would have been a vastly different scenario. Luckily, things turned out rather minor compared to what could have happened.

Upon talking with a CP mechanic summoned from Agincourt, I told him it's amazing how minor the damage is. He promptly shook his head, and said "it's huge damage." Obviously, a railfan's point of view versus a locomotive mechanic is going to be very different. Nonetheless, he and his colleagues spent the next few hours weld repairing 8849's front trucks, which snapped from the force of the derailment.

In this photo, 8849 has had its weld repair completed, and the front axles are slowly being rerailed. 9617 was rerailed rather quickly hours earlier, having sustained no safety-problematic damage to the trucks and wheels. Both units were ready to roll by 10:30pm. Around 12am, a Geep set from West Toronto Yard picked them up and very slowly tugged them back to Agincourt Yard. Traffic was running again before sundown, and the track repairs continued into the next day. The east switch of the Howland interlocking and a section of storage track P66 needed to be rebuilt.