(The following article by Betty Booker was posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website on September 20.)
RICHMOND, Va. — Twenty-nine loaded CSX coal cars derailed Saturday night in Richmond’s upscale West End, spilling coal and tilting open cars like pick-up sticks along the tracks and the Kanawha Canal.
The engine of the 1.4-mile long train was pulling 149 open cars hauling 100 tons each on a run from Elkhorn, W.Va., to Newport News when the cars slid off the tracks.
CSX Corp. spokesman Adam Hollingsworth said the reason for the derailment is under investigation. No one was injured.
Crews started the cleanup before dawn yesterday. By early yesterday evening they had righted some cars and moved most of the spilled coal away from the track for later removal.
The derailment site is near a private bridge that crosses the tracks and canal to the estate of Inger Rice, widow of Walter Rice, who a former Reynolds Metals Co. executive and an ambassador to Australia.
One track is expected to be useable by this morning, Hollingsworth said.
But CSX doesn’t know when the more damaged second track, which twisted and slid out of kilter toward the canal, will be repaired and ready for use.
Stuart Siegel, who is chairman of S&K Famous Brands Inc. and who lives nearby, stood on the bridge watching the cleanup and studying the terrain.
A hill beside the two parallel tracks showed signs of erosion and washoff from recent heavy rains, he noted. The canal-side railbed had sunk and fallen toward the water in several places as the coal cars wrenched and pushed the tracks out of place.
Hollingsworth said all CSX tracks are inspected after every major storm, and the tracks and roadbed passed muster after the remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston dumped 14 inches on Richmond two weeks ago.
The wreck happened at 10:30 p.m. with a series of loud booms, followed by a prolonged grinding screech, that woke Tom Kennedy, who lives nearby. “What was that!” Kennedy said he asked his wife. “That was just a train stopping,” she replied.
It was a logical conclusion. The edge of their wooded West End property is 150 yards from the old trade waterway and the CSX embankment.
“I knew something had happened about 3:30 in the morning,” Kennedy said. “There were helicopters over my house with giant floodlights.”
Yesterday morning, Kennedy, creative director of Kennedy & Green Communications, decided to “hop in my trusty canoe and paddle down the canal.”
Around the bend he came upon about 15 cars “all smashed together, one hanging out over the canal and about five perpendicular. One was thrown up against the structure at Ambassador Rice’s bridge ,and I thought, ‘Whoa! Train wreck!’
“Then there was a space where the cars were upright on the track. Farther up the track there were some more cars off the track. Coal was all over the place.”
The Times-Dispatch reported Friday that CSX, a major freight hauler, had sustained an estimated millions of dollars in car-and-track repair bills as a result of damage sustained when the remnants of Gaston swept through the Richmond area.
About 6 miles of track were damaged in the area. Included were washouts of small sections of tracks, which required replacing ballast to support rails and crossties, and damage to Acca Yard.
“We certainly don’t run trains until our track and roadbed have been visually inspected,” Hollingsworth said last night. And that includes the site of the West End train wreck. “Track in that area is maintained to sustain the kinds of loads we move over it,” he said.