July 10, 2026

NORTHLANDER COLLIDES WITH TOW TRUCK, IN BRACEBRIDGE, DURING NORTHBOUND TEST RUN EARLY MID-AFTERNOON THURSDAY

BRACEBRIDGE — A tow truck driver is lucky to be alive after an accident with a Northlander train undergoing testing.

The early mid-afternoon collision today plowed the white Galaxy flatbed vehicle 35 metres into the left hand ditch, at 1:45 p.m. Thursday, at the High Falls Road intersection.

It ended up facing south after it looked like it had been struck just behind the driver’s seat while attemptng to pass in front of the Ontario Northland number 930 Northlander Train.

Less than a half-kilometre east of Manitoba Street North — Bracebridge’s main street.

The truck driver suffered only minor injuries and no one else was injured, including an unspecifified number Northlander staff aboard the train, said police.

Looking at train number 930 as was hauled away by another pair of Northland engines heading north to North Bay its front left bumper was bent and damaged.

The Ontario government has purchased three trains for refurbishing and scheduled for use travelling from Northern Ontario to Toronto daily.

**A tow truck involved in today’s collision, with a Northlander train, faces south after the accident at 1:45 p.m. on High Falls Road in Bracebridge. PHOTO Danielle Foisy**

Neighbouring accounts after crash

By all accounts and appearances at the scene tonight, the northbound train collided with the westbound mid-size truck as it going across the rail intersection, which is marked with a flashing light standard.

Jim Darrach, who lives three doors west of the accident scene, said he “just passed him on (Hwy. 11) just south of Huntsville.”

And both vehicles turned right onto High Falls Road (District Rd. 50).

Darrach said he made it over the railway crossing just before the tow truck.

“He was behind me. And that’s far as he made it.

“I heard he wasn’t hurt, he walked out,” added Darrach, who said he thought it was “broke in half.”

“I think he was probably trying to race the train and get across before the train got there.”

Darrach, who had to get into Bracebridge for a medical appointment, met emergency crews racing out on the north end of main street just south of the Old Falkenburg Road.

His next door neighbour said her husband her some kind of “boom.”

The truck was plowed into a ditch on the left side of the track with the northbound train coming to a stop further up the CN track as police, CN and Northlander officials investigate. PHOTO Danielle Foisy

On the other side of the tracks, neighbour Danielle Foisy had also just gotten home headed east off Manitoba Street.

“I actually had driven past them like less than two minutes, I think, before it happened.”

But the lights weren’t on or anything. And then as I pulled in and as I was coming up I heard the lights.

“And then I didn’t personally hear anything. But my son did.

“Then literally two minutes later my neighbour walked in and she was like ‘Oh, my God! Something just happened.”

Foisy said my “neighbour across the road said she saw him go by and she heard the train like horn and said she was thinking like, ‘that guy’s going really fast.’

“And he came to the intersection. And two people said he was going like really fast. And maybe tried to beat it. Like, I don’t know if, he saw the thing coming down and thought he had the time.”

She said the front and side of the truck was hit and damaged.

“And I think he got spun around. I think so.”

She said took photos.

“But a lot of them were the same as other people.”

Northland’s damaged number 930 train was dragged the rest on its destination from Toronto to North Bay at 8:30 p.m. tonight, showing its damaged front left bumper where it collided with the tow truck. PHOTOS Mark Clairmont MuskokaTODAY.com

Foisy said she told someone she had just “literally” crossed the tracks.

“And the lights weren’t on. So I was like, were the lights working? And someone said: ‘Yeah the lights were on the whole time.’

“The must have gone on right after I went over them.”

Foisy didn’t talk to the truck driver, but spoke to “a bunch of the CN and Northlander people.”

She said it was “awhile” before paramedics departed.

“It was like they sat there for a while and stuff and then they left. I don’t know how he got hit by a train and is OK. But it seemed like he was OK.”

Another neighbour, Doug Coutts, said he didn’t hear anything because he was in his workshop basement.

But he said his cousin. Elva Woods, who comes to help him, said she, too, ran out to help.

Northlander hauled north at 8:25 p.m.

Just before 8:25 p.m. the Northlander was back headed north to Northland’s headquarters in North Bay and crossing Manitoba Street at the Falkenburg siding.

The Northlander has been seen making several north- and southbound trips through Muskoka for more than a month as it prepares for return to service, which Premier Doug Ford told MuskokaTODAY.com last winter that could happen this summer.

However Northland has said before that its return is possible this fall.

Today’s accident may or may not delay those predictions.

And rail workers said there didn’t appear to be any delay in freight traffic movement Thursday. There are two sidings in Falkenburg and Washago for the Northlander to pull over to allow them to pass.

Also, the incident comes after this winter’s announced sale of CN track between Washago and North Bay is due to take affect at the end of August.

A long stretch of High Falls Road, which runs between Hwy. 11 east and Manitoba Street on the west was closed for about eight hours for an OPP investigation.

Police say the investigation is ongoing and anyone with information is asked to call them at the Bracebridge detachment at 1-888-310-1122.