(The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted the following article on its website on April 22.)
RICHMOND, Va. — Several CSX rail cars derailed early this morning in downtown Richmond’s, leaving behind them piles of black coal and twisted metal.
At 6:41 a.m., the back end of line of coal cars veered off the above-ground tracks on the north side of the floodwall around 16th and Dock streets in Shockoe Bottom.
One car fell completely on its side, dumping a huge pile of coal on the ground. A few cars behind it buckled and shifted on the tracks, sending broken wood railroad slats and metal clips flying onto the ground.
No one was injured.
By 10 a.m., a half-dozen cranes waited in a parking lot near the floodwall, waiting to pull some of the undamaged cars from the tracks. But even the undamaged cars appeared to lean to the side and threaten to fall.
A handful of Richmond police officers and public utilities workers gathered to assess the damage to the tracks.
CSX will be responsible for the cleanup, Richmond police detective Ron Brown said. CSX officials were not available at the scene and did not return phone calls for comment.
Dock between 14th and 18th was closed to traffic for several hours.
Randy Lowry, an architectural engineer who was at work early in the morning at Baskervill & Son, sat in front of his computer with headphones on when he heard an awful noise.
“I heard this loud bang. I thought they were dumping trash,” he said. “They bang those trash cans around out back. But this didn’t sound like that.”
Lowry rushed downstairs from his third-floor office and outside and saw the rail cars stopped. When he walked to the other side of the canal, he saw the twisted mess.
He even took some of his own pictures.
“You don’t see that every day,” he said.