'Too young to be taken': Snowplow driver killed by train was 26

A 26-year-old London man has been identified as the driver of the sidewalk snowplow that was hit and killed by a CN train passing through downtown London.

Malcolm Trudell was operating a Bobcat, heading northbound on Colborne Street Wednesday, when he was hit by an eastbound freight train.

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"He was very hard working... He loved his family very much," his mother Robin Kindreewrote on social media, too distraught to talk.

The City of London said the driver was an employee of a company on contract withthe municipality.

It is not clear how many hours Trudell had been driving at the time of the accident, or how much training he'd had.

The London Police had been working in conjunction with CN investigators to establish what went wrong, but a police spokesperson said Thursday the force is no longer involved.

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"It is now their investigation due to the fact that the fatality took place on federal property," Sandasha Bough said in an email to CBC News.

"My son was a wonderful young man.He was too young to be taken from us like this," Kindree said,

Trudell was a high school graduate of H.B. BealSecondary School in London.