April 22 - In the Ryongchon disaster, a flammable cargo explodes at the railway station in the town of Ryongchŏn, North Korea, near the border with China; the explosion occurs only a few hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il passed through the station en route back to the capital from a secret meeting in China.
August 31 - The United StatesSurface Transportation Board renews the authority of TTX Corporation to continue pooling and leasing railroad rolling stock for ten more years, over the protests of other rolling stock leasing companies.
October 14 - The CanadianTransportation Safety Board issues its final report on the CN accident of May 2, 2002; the report blames the truck driver's fatigue as the cause of the accident and admonishes fire crews for less-than-optimal training in hazardous materials.
October 15 - Canadian National Railway announces that it is selling its locomotive remote control business unit (which produced the Beltpack control system) to Cattron Group, Inc., so the railroad can focus on operations.
November 16 - The northbound high speed tilt train Spirit of Townsville from Brisbane, bound for Cairns, failed to slow down for a very sharp 60 km/h curve at Rosedale, Queensland, Australia, derailing the train; remarkably, although seven of the train's passenger cars left the tracks, no fatalities were reported from this accident. See Rosedale train crash.
Many of the events on this page were translated from 2004 dans les chemins de fer (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_dans_les_chemins_de_fer), the equivalent French-language Wikipedia.
Rail is a safe mode of transport, and is six times safer than travelling by car.
It is worth reminding the House that in 2001–02, the last year for which complete figures are available, 3,431 lives were lost on the roads and 307 on the railways.
It is therefore a very safe mode of transport, but we want it to be much safer so that it is as safe as possible.
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