TRAIN ACCIDENT VICTIM IDENTIFIED, WORKED AT LOCAL AUTO INDUSTRY SUPPLY STORE
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — A fatal train accident here yesterday has claimed the life of a local auto industry worker.
Don Edghill, 55, of Bracebridge, died when his pickup truck collided with the CN Rail train as he drove southbound on Winhara Road and turned right onto Jones Road.
The accident occurred shortly after noon Wednesday, neighbours today next the crash site said.
Edghill, who had worked for about five years at Muskoka Auto Parts in Gravenhurst, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Emergency services were called at 12:45 p.m. by a passing motorist.
Police, paramedics and Gravenhurst Fire responded to the intersection on Winhara, which is a parallel side road adjacent to Hwy. 11. It houses a small collection of homes and is popular alternative route between Gravenhurst and Bracebridge.
Train tracks run alongside it for much of the 10 kilometre stretch.
Ruth Cunningham says Winhara is a “very risky road, especially when the highway is shut down.”
She lives two doors northeast of where the accident happened and spoke to MuskokaTODAY.com as cars and trucks whizzed by despite a new 50 kph traffic-enforcement speed warning sign.
She said it was 5:30 p.m. before a new train crew arrived, boarding to continue the train trip south toward Toronto and after officials checked the track.
It is the same track the return of the Northlander train will take next year.
She said the small copper-coloured pickup ended in the median between the tracks and Winhara Road.
A flatbed tow truck took the vehicle away.
Several trains regularly still travel the tracks daily,” she said.
“We’re use to the trains.
“We get three horns. One up there,” she said pointing north; “one there” indicating in front of her home of some 20 years.
“And then one right there,” she pointed at looking south toward the crash scene.
“The third horn didn’t stop — and I went ‘Ohh! We got a problem.’”
“They blew the horn. We’re use to hearing horns.”
That’s when she went outside and another passerby had already called 911.
“There was two horns and then the third one was the long one. And that usually means ….
Cunningham was in her living room and “I didn’t hear the crash.”
Other nearby neighbours, too, said they didn’t hear the crash.
But she rushed out.
“Of course. You see the train stop and you hear it. And I looked down that way and saw all the lights and I’m going …. I figured it was further down.”
The truck came to rest 100 metres south of the intersection on a small left embankment.
The remnants of a 24-hour snowfall of 5-10 cms remained on the ground.
Cunningham said she saw firefighters getting into the truck to extricate the driver.
“When I went out there there were two EMS and nobody was running around, so I new it was a fatal.”
She kept her distance out of respect for the family and after hearing similar stories from her older brother Doug Cunningham who was a staff sergeant with the OPP in Bracebridge before retiring a decade ago.
Tim Holmes, who lives closest to the accident, said he and his wife were in Gravenhurst at the time and had to detour around the site before getting home and then later heading north to work at Fenner Dunlop about 4 o’clock.
All he could see after was the truck that had landed off the tracks after “being hit and spit out almost onto the road.”
Neighbour Tim Cruise, too, didn’t hear the crash as he was in his paint shop booth, but said he’d heard the driver worked at MAP.
Les Penwarden said “You can hear the bells quite easy. You can hear them right up here and you can hear the train whistle blow three, four times. You sort of get use to it living here.”
He doesn’t find the road overly busy, noting it gets busier in the winter when snowmobiles drive along the tracks connecting the OFSC’s snowmobile trail ‘D’ to other sections of its trails.
In Cunningham’s two decades living there she’s “never” seen anything like this.
Not even an accident? “No.”
“Occasionally” there’ve been a few vehicles get stuck on the tracks “when it’s not plowed out right.”
There is a slight dip onto the tracks crossing onto Jones Road.
Holmes remembers once when a train sparked a brush fire alongside the track.
Cunningham could see the crossing lights at the intersection were still activated when she arrived and said they remained on overnight till the next train this morning.
“Sometimes they get stuck on.”
Cunningham said she sees vehicles regularly “fly” along Winhara and “turn” on the Jones Road.
“So it’s not a surprise. You can’t see the light or the train until you’re right there. And it was daylight and you didn’t have the light from the train.
“The crossing lights were going.”
Robert Pusching’s property is right beside the track and he was outside on his deck about 30 metres away from the rails while “doing some pruning.”
A resident only 18 months, he said he’s had to get use to the trains.
He also didn’t hear the collision some 500 metres down the track from the home he shares with wife Kristine.
“There was a cloud of — it was like a steel burning cloud, which I didn’t think about. But that I never noticed before.
“It was quite a cloud.”
Then the train stopped.
“It was going at a fair clip and so then it stopped. And I thought — well I didn’t want to think.”
He said at first he didn’t hear the train and its long line of steel cars stop, “but I may have.
“I was thinking about it later and my ears were wide open. It was very quiet up to that point. Now I may have heard something, but I couldn’t identify what I heard.”
“My view goes all the way to the Jones Road through my property. I could see all the lights. A red light was flashing.”
That’s when he headed down to the corner and saw the truck in the ditch and first responders on scene.
“It was a very sombre, sad scene.”
Pusching, a retired steel industry worker from Hamilton, said after what he’s heard and pieced together, “the way we look at it is he maintained his speed of 50 and came to the corner and all the lights were flashing. But he couldn’t stop in time before he reached the train.”
“That’s the way I see it. I assumed he ran into the train. But I don’t know that. I can’t say that for sure.
“But driving along, if you hear a train there — he would have — he must have heard the train. If he was going 50, I’m sure he would have heard the train. It’s hard to say just how that happened.”
He also said the crossing lights continued to flash while emergency crews were on the scene.
Police and CN officials continue to investigate.
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