(The Associated Press distributed the following article on October 7.)
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — A freight train derailed in Springfield early Thursday, killing a rail worker who was pinned between a railcar and a fence, authorities said.
Shawn Young, 31, died at 1:15 a.m. of “massive brain trauma,” Sangamon County Coroner Susan Boone said.
Seven cars filled with oats and one empty car derailed near an overpass on Sangamon Avenue, Springfield police and the Union Pacific Railroad said.
The Union Pacific train had three locomotives and 122 cars and was traveling from East St. Louis to Chicago, company spokesman Mark Davis said.
Young, of Waterloo, which is southeast of St. Louis, had been a Union Pacific employee for just three weeks, said Boone, who will conduct a coroner’s inquest within two weeks.
Davis said the train was being switched between tracks in tight quarters near a viaduct and a private fence. As the train derailed, Young was pinned between a railcar and the fence, Davis said.
The derailment spilled grain from the rail cars and left two cars hanging over the edge of the overpass, forcing authorities to close the lanes below to traffic, police said.
Officials were trying to determine the cause of the derailment. Union Pacific had no estimate on when the line would reopen.