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“One of Woodard’s family members, who did not want to be identified, said everyone is struggling with the loss. She chose to wait until the entire family was informed about the tragic death before speaking publicly about Woodard,” wrote the Citizen. It was Woodard’s wife’s birthday on Tuesday.

The train’s locomotive and a passenger car came off the tracks, but all of the casualties were on the bus, with no injuries among the 100 people on the train. The train came to a halt about 100 metres west of the accident site.

The city’s double-decker buses can seat up to 82 people. OC Transpo said they do not know how many were on the bus Wednesday morning.

Images posted to the Transportation Safety Board’s Flickr page, seem to indicate the bus hit the side of the train’s locomotive under the driver’s cab, less than a metre from the nose.

Bus passengers said they yelled “Stop! Stop!” as the bus ran through warning symbols at the train crossing. The driver has been confirmed to be among the deceased by the union. The union said the driver had about ten years of experience.

“People started screaming, ‘Stop, stop!’ because they could see the train coming down the track,” Tanner Trepanier, who was sitting on the top level of the bus, told The Canadian Press.

The front end of the OC Transpo bus was severely damaged, images from the scene near Woodroffe Avenue and Fallowfield Road show. Witnesses say the front part of the 76 Express bus was ripped off by the impact, which occurred in the middle of the morning commute, at about 8:50 a.m.