Two of three people injured in last Sunday afternoon's White Pass and Yukon Route train derailment are out of hospital, the company said Wednesday.

The accident occurred at milepost 36.5 between Log Cabin and Bennett, B.C. A northbound work train consisting of a diesel locomotive and eight centre-dump hopper cars of ballast (crushed rock) derailed and crashed.

This accident resulted in serious injury to conductor Lee Hartson Jr. and engineer Jeff Ruff of Skagway; serious injury to heavy equipment operator Neal Plested of Carcross and fatal injury to heavy equipment operator Bruce Harder of Carcross. The three injured men were medivaced to Whitehorse General Hospital the day of the crash.

Hartson was subsequently medivaced to Anchorage for further treatment.

Plested and Ruff are now out of hospital, White Pass said.

The cause of the accident is under investigation by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Transport Canada and the RCMP.

'Our thoughts and prayers remain with our employees and their families and friends who have suffered deeply as a result of this accident,' White Pass said.

Meanwhile, the Skagway Fire Department shared its account of the derailment with The Skagway News.

The various responders co-ordinated smoothly, said Skagway Fire Chief Mark Kirko.

'This was a very large operation that involved 14 different agencies that all worked together flawlessly,' he said.

Skagway EMS and Search and Rescue personnel arrived at the scene within an hour of the initial call, said Kirko.

EMS Capt. Jeremy Simmons co-coordinated with a Carcross nurse for patient care while Search and Rescue Capt. Wayne Greenstreet called the shots at the scene.

For two hours, Kirko assumed the initial incident command role at Log Cabin until the Whitehorse Fire Department arrived, he said.

At that point, Kirko briefed Whitehorse Fire Chief Clive Sparks on the situation and deferred command to Canadian jurisdiction while requesting that Skagway personnel continue working.

'The chief agreed and placed his personnel and equipment at the disposal of the onsite co-ordinators,' Kirko said.

Extricating Plested from the engineer's compartment took responders about five hours, said Kirko, who added the quarter- to half-inch-thick steel caused the struggle.

'You've watched these tools tear doors off of cars, but on a train ....' said Kirko of devices they used, such as the jaws of life, sawzall and hydraulic spreading ram.

'This was definitely an eye-opening situation for us,' Kirko said, and noted that they will look into purchasing equipment suited for train accidents.

The Skagway News contributed to this story.