Stunning Images Show Potash Train Derailed In Canada Amid Fertilizer Crunch

Welp...as horrific as this is and not helping the farmers...this particular bulk commodity train was destined for overseas delivery. So it's going to effect European farmers. Saving some grace is that only 43 cars hit the ground most product will be recovered and transloaded

It was a unit train (a train that is dedicated to only one type of commodity).

Potash is a very dense commodity and those types of unit trains are VERY heavy and usually, depending on how many cars it had, have remote or "slave" engines located etheir mid train or a tailend remote to help them get through to the Rockies enroute to the Port of Vancouver BC on the West Coast.

Normally they are very stable and easy to handle due to the uniform of same type of cars and weight per car.

This particular section of track is flat and straight and located in Southern Alberta where it gets comparatively hot. The heat has a tendency to create "sun kinks" in the rail. That is if you think of the tracks as a piece of spaghetti as it heats up it will create slight curvature deviations. But the weather wasn't hot enough for that. There may be a chance due to the weight of the train it broke a rail. Think of the constant rhythmic pounding an undetected weak spot...Or...if the train is speeding it could create an harmonic wobble which may cause the cars to hit the ditch..

This section of track is also the mainline and gets a shitload of traffic over it that will be taken into account as well.

Heres some additional info.
Canadian Pacific Railway started running a new potash bulk train profile. The loads originate in Saskatchewan with 4 locomotives spread throughout the train that would consist of 177 cars! Yikes! Thats a shit ton of weight!!

Also...just put things in perspective:

In total, the world produced an estimated 43,000 million tons of potash in 2020.

Canada, 14 million metric tons
Russia, 7.6 million metric tons
Belarus, 7.3 million metric tons
China, 5 million metric tons
Germany, 3 million metric tons
Israel, 2 million metric tons
Jordan, 1.5 million metric tons
Chile, 900 thousand metric tons
Spain, 470 thousand metric tons

So the hit will be negligible on the worlds totality of output. What is going to be an issue as it is the southern maintrack to the coast its going to take some time to get the track clear and fwoilher back up other traffic that is needed.