Via Rail passenger says fatal Sask. derailment caused hundreds on separate train to be stuck overnight

A man on a cross-country train trip with his family says the derailment of another train following a fatal collision on Wednesday left hundreds of people stuck overnight in rural Saskatchewan with little information from Via Rail.

Michael Van Luven, his wife, and their 13-year-old son were travelling from B.C. to Kingston, Ont., on Wednesday when the Via Rail train they were on stopped near Gerald, Sask., a village about 200 kilometres east of Regina.

They didn't know at first that a man from the Esterhazy, Sask., area had been killed when a tractor and a freight train collided Wednesday afternoon. The crash caused freight cars to derail north of Gerald.

"You could see that several cars were off the track. At first, we thought it was just a general derailment caused by perhaps just overloading the material, but later we were told that an individual had passed away and people were very concerned," he said.

Van Luven said he understands the seriousness of the crash and expressed his condolences for the person who was killed.

He said passengers were provided accommodation in Melville, a city roughly 100 kilometres west of Gerald, for the night.

Van Luven and his family, along with what he estimated to be 300 other passengers, were put on buses to Winnipeg Thursday morning.

He said passengers feel abandoned by Via Rail because of a lack of communication. It was left up to the passengers to find a way out of Winnipeg, he said.

"I would say that people are trying to be as optimistic as they can, but at the same time they're worried about what's going to happen once they get to Winnipeg, what will be available, what flights will be available, will there be buses, how they're going to get home," he said.

Via Rail communicated to passengers through an email, accessed by CBC News, that it would refund passengers for the cancelled portion of the trip and offer travel credit for a journey to their destinations. Via didn't respond to CBC's request for a comment.

Van Luven said the back-and-forth with Via has left him and fellow passengers questioning the Canadian rail experience.

"We wanted to show our son Canada really look like from the west to the east as far as Kingston," he said.

"I think that's a general mood. It's just the feeling that we're more of a inconvenience at this point rather than a traveller who wants to enjoy the benefits of rail travel."

RCMP haven't released the name of the man who died. It says no liquid spills were reported, but some dried items and material goods spilled.

Numerous freight cars piled up at the scene of the crash and Canadian National workers were on site. A temporary fix was made to the tracks and train traffic was passing through the site Thursday afternoon.

Crews will continue work to cars and materials over the coming weeks, the Canadian National Railway Company said in an emailed statement Thursday.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said it deployed an investigator following the collision.