On a snowy December night in 1942, the town of Almonte, Ontario’s Christmas celebrations were cut short when a train transporting Canadian troops rear-ended an Ottawa-bound passenger train that was waiting at the station platform. It is considered one of the worst train wrecks in Canadian history.
At the Canadian Pacific Railway station in Almonte, Ontario, a Canadian military troop train operated by Canadian Pacific struck the rear of a local C.P. passenger train No. 550, “The Pembroke Local.”
– Duncan H. du Fresne in The RailLink, Mississippi Valley Associated Railroaders, December 2008
Anyone with any sense would have stayed by the fire that dreadful night. Snow and sleet competed with freezing rain as engineer Joe Sauvé and conductor M. O’Connell approached train No. 550 in Petawawa on December 27, 1942. They would have to pull the 10 wooden cars with “the contemptible old hog”! The engine: light Pacific No. 2518 had plied the tracks of the Ottawa Valley for 34 years and in all that time, it had not had a single trip that went smoothly. This would be its most disastrous… Thirty six people died and 207 were injured…
– Ron Ritchie from Branchline, Bytown Railway Society, December 1988