On December 27, 1942, a local train crammed with families and Ottawa Civil servants returning home from Christmas celebrations in Ottawa Valley towns such as Pembroke, Petawawa and Renfrew, was topped in Almonte Ontario to pick up 200 more passengers heading home to Carleton Place and Ottawa. A second train loaded with hundreds of Canadian troops headed to England for training and protection of England in anticipation of a German invasion was following in the distance regulation time allotment of twenty-minute space between trains.
However, the leading local was having minor mechanical issues which slowed it down as well stopping at every station to load more passengers then usual which took more time than planned. The troop train had none of these issues and while trying to keep the 20-minute safety space complete, had no speed gauge and thus had difficulty maintaining the space.
At the Almonte station the huge numbers of boarding passengers delayed the train further. Just as the conductor signal the engineer to commence, the troop train plowed into the rear wooden cars shattering them killing 37 people and badly injuring 150 more.
This volume is a memorial to those people published by The North Lanark Historical Society. It is a collection of interviews with survivors and article pulled from newspapers. ( )