(The following article by Patrick Flanigan was posted on the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle website on February 26.)
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Investigators with CSX Corp. are trying to determine why two boxcars on a 40-car train left the tracks in Riga on Sunday.
It was the second CSX derailment within a month.
“It’s under investigation,” said Tom Ferris, a train master for CSX, of Sunday’s accident.
The derailment happened at 12:16 p.m. near Gough Road, a rural dead-end street off Buffalo Road just west of Churchville. There were no injuries and CSX reported the derailment, said Churchville Fire Chief Tom Hetherington.
A boxcar carrying acetone, a hazardous chemical, was not affected by the derailment, Ferris said.
The firefighters sent to the scene were immediately told about the acetone and called the county hazardous material team, Hetherington said.
The first firefighters thought they smelled a chemical, but it turned out to be creosote from the tracks, Hetherington said.
The train was headed from Buffalo to Syracuse, said Ferris. A two-person crew was on board.
The tracks were shut down Sunday afternoon, causing Amtrak to stop service for five trains, three between Niagara Falls and Syracuse and two between Washington and Toronto, said Karina Romero, a company spokeswoman.
Some passengers were “bridged” around the derailment with buses. Others will resume their trips this morning, said Romero, who called the interruption “slight.”
“It went very smoothly,” Romero said from Washington. “We just try to accommodate everybody as best we can.”
The derailment came a little over a month after the derailment of a CSX train in East Rochester on Jan. 16.
Last week, federal investigators said that derailment was caused by a broken rail.