(The Savannah Morning News posted the following on its website on May 7.)
1998
January — A freight train derailed near Ogeechee Road in southwest Chatham County, just outside the city limits. There were eight railroad cars; none turned over. There were no injuries and traffic wasn’t affected.
June — A Chicago-bound commuter train slammed into a tractor-trailer carrying large steel coils in Portage, Ind., hurling one of the coils into a rail car, killing three passengers and injuring four others.
July — A motorist failed to see lights flashing at a Ga. 21 crossing in Garden City. A CSX train ran into the vehicle. No one was injured.
September — A Savannah man was struck by a train on tracks near Arctic Street off Ogeechee Road.
October — A train conductor was killed and an engineer and two passenger were injured when the “Success Express” — a special passenger train — smashed into a stalled log truck in Long County. Both locomotives and two of the cars derailed, but none overturned.
March — A Savannah woman trying to beat the train was traveling north bound in the right line on Ga. 21. The railroad crossing lights and bell activated. The car was hit and dragged more than 60 feet. She and her two passengers were not injured.
March — An Amtrak train collided with a truck and derailed near Bourbonnais, Ill., killing 13 people and injuring more than 100.
July — In Jacksonville, Fla., two Amtrak trains sideswiped as they passed each other, derailing several cars and slightly injuring eight people. An Amtrak engineer ignored two warnings to stop before his passenger train crashed into another passenger train.
September — An Amtrak train rear-ended a freight train in a rail yard in Cumberland, Md., injuring 37 people.
December — A 50-year-old man died after a Norfolk-Southern freight train hit a pickup truck in which he was riding. The truck with three men inside apparently stopped before the train track on Rahn Station Road before the vehicle moved onto the track as the train was approaching. The train couldn’t stop, and hit the truck on the passenger side. A 36-year-old passenger sitting in the middle was also injured. The 29-year-old driver of the pickup was not taken to a hospital for treatment
No injuries were reported on the train, which did not derail after it knocked the truck off the track.
2000
March — An Amtrak train derailed alongside a cornfield near Carbondale, Kan., injuring 29 passengers.
November — An Amtrak train derailed after hitting a truck near Moorpark, Calif., killing the truck driver and injuring about 30 people on the train.
December — A car stalled on the tracks at the Godley Road crossing near Port Wentworth. A passenger train collided with the empty vehicle and pushed the car about 1,000 yards. The driver was not in the car at the time.
2001
February — An Amtrak train collided with a freight train on the same track in Syracuse, N.Y., injuring 61 people.
March — An Amtrak train carrying 210 people from Chicago to California derailed in rural southwest Iowa, killing a passenger and injuring about 90 others.
April — A man was killed and two others injured when the truck they were in was hit by an oncoming train. The accident happened at the intersection of Godley Road and Ga. 21. The driver was going too fast, ran a stop sign and stopped on top of the tracks. The train dragged the pickup several hundred feet, throwing two of the passengers out of it. It was the third fatality in five years at the crossing.
2002
March — A passenger train collided with a tractor-trailer. The wreck occurred at Dean Forest Road and Ga. 21. None of the 200 passengers on board the Amtrak train No. 97 en route to Miami was injured. Traffic was shut down on Dean Forest for an hour.
May — An Amtrak Silver Meteor train collided with a tractor trailer hauling hardwood logs from the woods north of Coosawhatchie. The entire train derailed, but remained upright. Ten people were slightly injured, including one train crewman.
November — A Pooler motorist was killed Saturday when an Amtrak train collided with his vehicle at a Garden City junction. The train hit the passenger side of vehicle at a railroad crossing on Wheathill Road, near the Groves High School stadium.
November — A Savannah man suffered life-threatening injuries after a train struck his pickup near Garden City. He was southbound on Ga. 307 when his pickup crossed railroad tracks that run between Garden City and Port Wentworth. A 20-car cargo CSX train headed southeast toward Savannah struck the front end of the pickup, demolishing it. The driver was taken by helicopter to Memorial Health University Medical Center. No one else was injured. The man later died from his injuries.