(The following article by Cathy Woodruff was posted on the Albany Times-Union website on May 31.)
ALBANY, N.Y. — Residents evacuated from about 30 homes in the Montgomery County hamlet of Tribes Hill after a train derailment and fierce thunder storms spurred fears of an explosion have been allowed to return home, authorities said.
No one was injured in the 2 p.m. derailment of a CSX freight train hauling cars containing the remnants of a load of ethanol, said Neal Kling, a first lieutenant with the Tribes Hill Fire Department.
Residents who live near the tracks in the hamlet just west of Amsterdam, about 40 miles from Albany, were told to leave their homes as storms baring dangerous lightning raised the concern that an errant strike could ignite vapors of the combustible liquid often used in camp stoves and, increasingly, as a gasoline additive and alternative fuel.
The families were allowed to return home around 7 p.m., but as of 8 p.m. the rail cars remained off the tracks while officials tried to determine the cause of the wreck, Kling said.
Fire officials said 14 tanker cars derailed, at least one of which contained vegetable oil.
CSX Transportation, the freight railroad that was operating the train and owns the tracks where the accident occurred, could not immediately be reached for information on the crash.
The train was heading west on tracks that run along the Mohawk River, parallel to Route 5.
The derailment also disrupted passenger service.
Amtrak is using buses to ferry passengers around the site and canceled its Lake Shore Limited run from New York City to Chicago this afternoon.
Amtrak halted two of its westbound afternoon trains at Albany and Amsterdam and shuttled passengers by bus to Syracuse to continue their trips, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. Eastbound passengers on Train 286 from Niagara Falls to New York City and on the Maple Leaf from Toronto transferred to buses at Utica and Syracuse, Black said.
The westbound Lake Shore Limited was canceled, Black said. It was to leave New York City at 3:20 p.m. and was scheduled to pull out of Albany at 6:25 p.m. after a half-hour layover.
Passengers on the eastbound Lake Shore Limited out of Chicago were offered seats on an alternative train, the Capitol Limited to Washington, D.C., which shares some of the same stops and could provide connections to other East Coast cities, Black said.
No other westbound trains are scheduled to come through the Albany-Rensselaer station today, and the plan for Wednesday has not yet been settled, Black said.
“CSX has not been able to let us know when the track will be reopened, so we are withholding the decision-making process” until more information is available, he said.