(The following article by Deborah Highland was posted on the Gallatin News Examiner website on January 16.)
GALLATIN, Tenn. — CSX Railroad officials continued to clear away debris Sunday and investigate the cause of a nine-car train derailment just off of Ross Avenue in Gallatin.
Nine of the train’s 55 rail cars left the train tracks at about 5:20 p.m. Saturday from a train that was traveling from Louisville, Ky. to Atlanta, Ga., CSX spokesman Bob Sullivan said.
“All of a sudden the house started shaking real bad and the lights started flickering. I looked up and I saw the box cars coming. They were derailing,” said Diane Gray who lives at 261 Ross Avenue just feet away from the CSX switching station near where the train derailed.
“I just started screaming for everybody to get out of the house. My daughter-in-law thought it was a tornado and she jumped into the bath tub. We told her to get out,” said Gray who lives in the home with her husband, Harry Brassell, and four other relatives.
Gray and her family have been temporarily displaced by the derailment and were staying yesterday in a Gallatin motel until CSX can be sure it’s safe to go back into the home, she said. The railroad is paying for their motel stay.
“It’s just been very devastating,” Gray said.
Two of the family’s three cars were completely totaled when the rail cars smashed into them. And, the force of the accident separated a boat from its trailer burying the trailer in the front yard and flattening the boat in the back yard, she said.
“We will work with that family. We’re obviously very interested in their care and welfare. We will make sure that they are compensated for those damages,” Sullivan said about Gray and her family.
Sullivan was unaware of any other family displaced by the accident and said that no hazardous chemicals were leaked as a result of the derailment.
In and near Gray’s side yard rested the remnants of rail cars that were removed Saturday night and early Sunday morning. On the other side of the train tracks, overturned rail cars still sat Sunday afternoon with damaged cargo. Pieces of crumpled steel were scattered through a field near the train tracks. New Chrysler minivans were hanging, mangled in one of the rail cars.
All of the nine derailed cars were carrying automobiles, Sullivan said.
Gray and other witnesses who live on Ross Avenue had never heard or felt anything quite like the derailment, they said.
“We always hear trains,” said Dana Mendez who lives in a trailer at 239 Ross Ave. “This one was enormously loud.
“The lights started flickering. I looked out the window and saw that a train had fallen off of the track,” Mendez said.
“I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A movie set is what it looked like down there. I seen the trees falling like toothpicks,” Mendez said.
“It was like an earthquake and it was loud like a tornado was out the back door,” she said.
“It’s a wonder nobody got hurt,” Mendez said. “There’s always people walking down near the tracks. You just don’t ever dream of the train jumping the tracks.”
Gray, who has lived in her home near the railroad for 14 years, agreed.
“I just never thought it would happen until it happened,” she said.
“We just lost our mother a month ago. This was just the icing on the cake as far as the devastation,” Gray said.
Destroyed along with her family’s cars and boat was also a row of pink rose bushes planted several years ago by her late mother.
“I think that’s what tore my heart apart,” Gray said as she became visibly upset.
Gray has never feared living so close to the train tracks, she said, until now.
“We’ve gotten used to it. It’s never bothered us. Now I’m afraid of it,” she said.