A man on a cross-country train trip with his family says the fatal derailment of another train left hundreds of people stuck overnight in rural Saskatchewan with little information from VIA Rail.

Michael Van Luven, his wife, and their 13-year-old son were travelling from B.C. to Kingston, Ont., on Wednesday when the VIA Rail train they were on stopped near Gerald, Sask., a village about 200 kilometres east of Regina.

They didn't know at first that a man from the Esterhazy, Sask., area had been ki…