(The following story by Neale Gulley appeared on The Tonawanda News website on August 12, 2010.)
TONAWANDA, N.Y. — For the second time in less than a week, a CSX train came off its rails Wednesday afternoon, creating minor traffic hang-ups as rail cars sat motionless across Oliver Street and Carruthers Place.
“Train’s dead again, just like it was Friday,” Ken Staschak said as he worked in a garage bay at Oliver Auto Repair, near the corner of Miller Street after 4 p.m.
Cars heading south on Oliver Street each made sense of the obstruction in their own time, each eventually turning around in a scene almost identical to the one last Friday, when the same freight train bounced slightly askew from the same section of track between Oliver and Sommer streets.
Just a day before Wednesday’s repeat incident, crews had cleared cars on either side of the at-grade crossing. CSX had removed the section of cars blocking the road to initially allow traffic to flow over the weekend, Staschak said.
“They came off on Friday, they just split it in the middle. They got it out yesterday and now it happened again,” he said.
North Tonawanda Fire Capt. Thomas Croop confirmed he asked train authorities about the contents of the cars and was told only paper products are ever on board and that the cargo routinely carried down the spur line to factories east of Oliver Street is never hazardous.
In any case, Friday and Wednesday’s slight derailments occurred at low speeds and train cars hadn’t toppled in either event.
“It’s a spur line, it goes off the main tracks at River Road,” Croop said. “It basically serves a couple factories … it doesn’t carry any hazardous materials. There’s a bad section of track and every time they go over it, it causes the carriage assembly that actually rides on the rails to bounce around and it comes off.”
He said the derailment in both events occurred on a section of track lower than the adjacent sections, located near the corner of North Marion and Sommer streets.
Repair crews were still on scene at 7 p.m. Though members were not at liberty to speak to the press, Croop said one of them said the tracks may be shut down until the problem can be fixed.
“You can see a section that’s lower than the others and I’m sure it needs repair and they said they’re going to take it out of service until they can repair it,” he said.
Three sections of the same service line have apparently presented similar problems, including one near the North Tonawanda Department of Public Works complex on Erie Avenue and another in the Wurlitzer Park area.
Officials with CSX could not be reached for comment Wednesday.