CHAOS Report #6 - Wheel Fracture, An Accident About to Happen - December 1, 2010

Mechanical Liaison Officer's report by Paul L. DeVerter II​

This report shows how insidious a broken wheel can be. Here we have Canadian National locomotive 5778 at Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, on November 12, 2010, after it has arrived on a train from Port Huron, Michigan, USA. A very eagle-eyed inspector, Mr. Cyril Mitchell, looked closely at the front right of the locomotive truck and found a badly fractured wheel. Although pieces of the wheel had already fallen off, for some unknown reason the wheel had not come apart. As you can see, the crack has already spread to the tread.

The moral of this story is that a thorough inspection is a necessity, and a welcome one at that. Can you imagine what would have happened if this had been a PV with lots of people on board, when a wheel fracture let go and the wheel came apart at speed?

Paul DeVerter