(The following article by Tim Johnson was posted on the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil website on June 18.)
NEOLA, Iowa — Several cars in a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train went off the tracks Saturday afternoon, spilling grain onto the ground.
The derailment occurred shortly after 3 p.m. about three-fourths of a mile south of the Neola exit off Interstate 80, according to Mike Fort, who lives just north of Neola. He saw the wreckage while traveling south on the interstate, he said.
“I saw the train go by, and then we came up and there were these cars tipped over and corn was everywhere,” he said. “It was about a mile-long train, and it was the rear portion that went off. There were two cars over on their sides, and there was probably one more that was off.”
Calls to Burlington Northern Sante Fe were not immediately returned Saturday evening.
The derailment occurred just a few miles from the proposed site for construction of an elevator by Scoular Co. of Omaha, Fort said. For him, it renewed concerns that the railroad tracks may not have been maintained well enough to hold up under grain shipments.
Scoular requested that 237 acres near Whippoorwill Road and Iowa Highway 191 be rezoned from agriculture to general industrial to accommodate the elevator. The Pottawattamie County Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously denied the rezoning in April after neighbors voiced opposition because of truck traffic the elevator would generate while students would be driving to Tri-Center School, an old bridge that they feared would not withstand the weight of grain trucks and the elevator’s possible effect on property values.
The issue is to be taken up by the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors at its meeting Monday, Fort said.