(The following story by Brent Jones appeared on The Baltimore Sun website on August 5, 2010.)
BALTIMORE, Md. — A CSX train carrying hazardous material derailed Thursday morning in the Howard Street tunnel, the site of a similar accident in July 2001 that paralyzed the city and freight travel along the East Coast for a week.
Officials said 13 cars in a 79-car train left the track about 8:15 a.m. at Howard Street and Mount Royal Avenue. Eleven cars derailed inside the tunnel, including one carrying fluorosilicic acid, a fire spokesman said. All of the cars remained upright and no hazardous material spilled, according to Roman Clark, the spokesman.
No one was injured.
City officials said no passenger trains use the Howard Street tunnel, and that MARC and Amtrak service would not be interrupted.
Firefighters, police and other emergency management personnel remain at the scene and expect to have the train back on the track by 3 a.m. Friday.
Officials say the train was headed from Hamlet, N.C., to Selkirk, N.Y.
The derailment happened in the same tunnel where 11 cars of a 60-car train went off track July 18, 2001, leading to a fire inside the tunnel after a tanker was punctured and the chemical inside ignited. The fire burned for a week.
Baltimore and Florida-based CSX Transportation Inc. battled in lawsuits, and about four years after the incident, CSX agreed to pay the city $2 million toward the cost of cleanup.
“It’s high-profile for us because this is the tunnel where we had a major derailment,” city Emergency Manager Robert Maloney said.
Two other times since then, CSX trains have gone off track, including a derailment in March near Patapsco Valley State Park in Baltimore County. Eight cars were sent from the tracks but caused no injuries or service disruptions.