A broken axle led to the derailment of a CN freight train in Saskatchewan last year, the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) said in a report released on Wednesday.

No dangerous goods were involved in the incident, in which 41 train cars and two locomotives left the tracks just west of Landis on Sept. 26, 2018.

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The cars were carrying canola seed.

TSB said the axle was probably damaged at a customer loading facility.

The report said that although rail cars are regularly inspected and certified, damaged axles are hard to visually detect.

“Such visual inspections may not identify a cracked or damaged axle, depending on the size and location of the defect,” TSB said in its report.

“Additionally, current wayside detectors are not necessarily designed to identify a rail car with a cracked axle. As such, cracked axles are often difficult to detect.”

The report said CN is issuing guidelines for loading facilities to prevent such an incident from happening again.

Landis is roughly 130 kilometres west of Saskatoon.

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