The trainee who was killed in Monday's tragic train derailment near the B.C.-Alberta border was following in his twin brother's footsteps when he died.
Jeremy Waldenberger-Bulmer is already a conductor with the Canadian Pacific Railway, and helped steer his brother Daniel toward the career.
"Before he started I always told him how much I loved my job and how I'm always excited to go to work," Jeremy said in a statement. "It made him realize that maybe he should try it out so he applied and got hired."
Daniel used to live in Victoria, but had recently moved into his brother's home in Calgary as he worked on becoming a conductor and establishing himself in the city.
Even though Daniel was still in training, Jeremy said the two of them were already envisioning long careers working in the same industry together.
"He loved the job so far," the grieving brother said. "We had big plans of living out our careers with CP Rail and retiring together to golf all over the world. He and I would go golfing any chance we got in the summer."
But Daniel's life and two other lives were cut short early Monday morning when Canadian Pacific train 301 jumped the tracks near Field, B.C. and plummeted 60 metres down an embankment.
Investigators are still working to determine what caused the accident, but said the train had been parked for about two hours when it started moving forward on its own.
The sudden loss has left many friends and family members absolutely devastated.
"I feel like half of me is gone now," Jeremy said. "I hope he's got a brand new set of clubs up there and is golfing the best game of his life … myself, my wife Merika and our daughter Tenley feel an emptiness in our home that is indescribable. He will truly be missed."
The other victims were Andrew Dockrell, an engineer with more than three decades of railroad experience, and conductor Dylan Paradis, a man who had worked closely with Daniel.
"When Daniel got paired with Dylan he requested that Dylan remain his coach because he looked up to him and loved everything Dylan was teaching him," Jeremy said.
Dylan's wife, Jennifer Paradis, described him a witty, loving, gracious and grounded person with a great sense of humour.
"His laugh was contagious, and his smile infectious," she told CTV News in a statement. "He was a family man. The sun would rise and set with his daughters, and I was lucky to feel his love every day. I will be forever grateful for our beautiful marriage."
A GoFundMe has been set up to help all three men's families through the tragedy, and had already raised more than $36,000 by Tuesday afternoon.
The Transportation Safety Board said the train's air brakes were deployed during its stop, and it's unclear how it started moving. Investigators do not believe the crew was responsible, however.
The crew lost control of the train as it picked up speed, breaking the 32 km/h limit for the steep and bending tracks in the area before finally hitting a curve and crashing.
A total of 99 cars and two locomotives plunged down the embankment, and the lead locomotive came to a rest in the Kicking Horse River.
The TSB said one of its next steps will be to recover the event recorder data from the wreckage to obtain more data for its investigation.
With files from CTV Vancouver's David Molko
