(The following article by Bill Geroux was posted on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website on September 23.)
NEWSOMS, Va. — Two CSX freight trains collided head-on in the predawn hours yesterday in rural Southampton County in an impact that hurled locomotives and cars off the tracks, injured six railroad employees, ignited a fire and closed a highway.
The freight trains, each with two locomotives and a long string of cars, converged on the same stretch of track from opposite directions and met just after 3:30 a.m., said State Police Sgt. D.S. Carr. The eastbound train was hauling 60 hopper cars full of rock from a quarry near Emporia to Portsmouth; the westbound train was returning from the same run with 31 empty cars.
The speed limit for that area is 40 mph, but CSX said it was still investigating how fast each train was traveling, as well as why the trains collided. Railroad spokesman Bob Sullivan would release few particulars of the accident yesterday.
Carr, the state police sergeant, said the crash happened less than a mile from a rail siding where trains can pull off to make way for other trains heading down the single track. He said the crews of the two trains saw the collision coming — on a long, straight stretch of track — but could not stop in time.
Carr said each train was occupied by a conductor, an engineer and a conductor trainee. All six of the CSX workers were in the locomotives at the moment of impact, he said, and all managed to escape the wreck and take shelter in nearby woods before the first rescuers arrived.
A railroad official at the scene said none of the injuries was life-threatening, though three of the six victims had been taken by helicopter to hospitals in Norfolk and Richmond. All but one had been released by yesterday evening.
Michael Drake, a volunteer firefighter with the Newsoms fire department, said he lives 3 miles from the site and was among the first to arrive. He first saw a mushroom of fire rise into the air as diesel fuel ignited after spilling from a ruptured saddle tank on one of the locomotives. “At first it looked really bad,” he said. The fire crew had to clear a toppled tree from state Route 671 to reach the fire. The flames charred a tree but burned themselves out, and firefighters sprayed foam on the spot.
CSX and contractors worked quickly yesterday to right the overturned cars and clean up the spilled diesel fuel. State Route 671, a busy Southside truck route, should be reopened by today. The crash is under investigation by the state police and the Federal Railroad Administration.