(The Associated Press circulated the following article by Carl Mario Nudi on September 27.)
PALMETTO, Fla. — A five-foot piece of track laid alongside the gravel railroad bed behind the quiet Memphis-area neighborhood, a result of a freight train derailment Monday afternoon.
The rusted piece of steel was snapped from the long ribbon of track, and both ends looked like the jagged edges of a wooden toothpick.
Six hopper cars carrying rock derailed on the CSX railroad tracks, three cars precariously leaned over the embankment of the gravel track bed, almost resting on their sides, with the other three cars still upright, but completely off the tracks.
The formerly parallel tracks were pieces of hard, twisted steel that looked like licorice candy sticks, and the big, oil-blacked wood ties were splintered as the steel wheels of the railroad cars cut through and upheaved them from the stone bed. The wheels cut a 10-foot-long trench about a foot-and-a-half deep into the track bed before the cars came to a stop.
Pene Thomas, whose home at 619 14th St. E. backs up to the railroad tracks, said the noise from the derailment was the loudest she had ever heard.
“I jumped up because I thought something was coming through the house,” she said.
She said she immediately called 911.
When her sister, Cristal Thomas, who also heard the noise, looked out the back window, she saw the first of the railroad freight cars coming off the track.
“I heard the rumbling noise and then saw the first car start to tumble,” Cristal Thomas said, adding that the other two cars followed, like dominos.
The tracks behind the sisters’ home is a branch line of CSX railroad.
The cars were being moved to a rail yard when then derailment occurred at about 1:20 p.m. Monday, CSX spokeswoman Meg Scheu said.
“No one was injured,” Scheu said. “And there were no hazardous materials.”
The hopper cars were carrying crushed rock and none of their cargo spilled, she said.
The cause of the derailment will not be known until the railroad company concludes its investigation.
“It will take a couple of days,” Scheu said. “We’ll look at the track, the train and the operating procedures.”
The CSX spokeswoman also said damage costs would not be known until the investigation is complete.
And how long repairs would take depends on the amount of damage, Scheu added.
“It usually takes 24 hours to get it up and going,” she said. “It’s a business thing to get trains going as soon as possible.”
Steve Kulm, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said that if his agency decided to do an investigation, it would use the same criteria as CSX.
Damage costs would determine whether the railroad company needed to file a report with the FRA, Kulm added.
In Manatee County, two train accidents have been reported to the FRA in the past four years, according to the agency’s Web site – one in 2002, when a switch was improperly lined, and the other in 2003, which involved rail spikes or other rail fasteners.
Data from the Web site indicated there were 98 railroad accidents in Florida from 2002-04, and 24 in the state so far this year.
Statistics from a FRA statement show train accidents have declined 10.1 percent over the first six months of 2005 compared to 2004