(The following story by Stephen Gurr appeared on The Gainesville Times website on July 26.)
GAINESVILLE, Ga. — April Eubanks was reading a Bible story to three toddlers Wednesday at the Faith Christian Academy preschool on Candler Road when she heard the train whistle blow from across the road.
“About two seconds later, the floor shook and the walls were just rocking,” Eubanks said. “It felt like an earthquake was happening.”
When she and her three young charges ran to the window, they saw six rail cars toppled over like a child’s plaything, a powdery, yellow cargo of soy meal spilling out into the road.
“The children were yelling, ‘choo-choo,'” Eubanks said.
No one was hurt in the 3:30 p.m. derailment, which involved a northbound, 10-car CSX train that left the tracks just south of Lee Land Road. The rail cars piled up along a straightaway that is parallel with the road, but no motorists were in the northbound lanes at the time of the derailment.
There was no fire or hazardous materials involved.
“It was one of the lucky ones,” Fire Chief David Kimbrell said.
The engineer told first responders that the emergency brakes on his locomotive locked down as the cargo cars behind him became separated from the engine.
“He said he looked back and saw it all tumbling,” Hall County Fire Chief David Kimbrell said. “Evidently it was just a weak place in the track.”
Emergency officials said the cleanup was likely to take a while, and could last into today. A crane is typically required to right the toppled cargo cars.
“It will be a pretty lengthy operation, but we’ll be able to keep one lane (of traffic) open, anyway,” Kimbrell said. By 5 p.m., southbound rush hour traffic was backed up for nearly a mile as Hall County Sheriff’s officials directed drivers through the single open lane.
A spokeswoman for CSX said the company was unsure what might have caused the wreck.
“We will look at the track and way the train was operating and when it derailed (before) we put a report together,” said CSX spokeswoman Meg Sacks. “it usually takes a couple of days.”
It was the second train derailment along Ga. 60 in less than a year. Last fall, four or five cars derailed and a fire started when a CSX train went off the tracks in a ravine further removed from the road near the Hall County-Jackson County line, officials said. No one was hurt in that accident.
Pat Austin, who lives next door to the preschool and just a few dozen feet from the scene of the derailment, briefly became frantic when she couldn’t reach her husband after hearing an ear-splitting boom of crashing metal.
“We’ve lived here for 40 years and never heard anything like that,” she said.
Her husband, Leon Austin, predicted a tedious cleanup and rebuilding of the rails that could snarl traffic along the stretch of road for days.
“Boy, it’s going to be a mess out here,” he said.