(The following story by Leah Thorsen appeared on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on December 12.)
EVANSVILLE, Ill. — The overturned train cars and mounds of spilled coal in Robert Mudd’s yard on Tuesday was a sight a bit too familiar to residents on Pine Street.
It was the second time in less than a week that a Union Pacific train derailed in the Randolph County village of 750. The most recent derailment happened Monday evening, just five days after a different train spilled its load about a quarter mile east of there.
Mudd, who works nights, was sleeping at 7 p.m. Monday when the train, traveling from coal mines in Southern Illinois, made an unexpected stop in its journey to Momence, Ill. That stop was 100 feet behind Mudd’s Pine Street home of 35 years on the western edge of Evansville.
“The house was shaking,” he said.
He looked outside and saw the sparks flying off the rails beneath the screeching train. Seven of the 124 cars derailed. He estimated that five dumped coal.
His yard looked like a construction site on Tuesday afternoon. Heavy equipment sank into the mud as crews worked to clean up the coal. (Mudd said the railroad assured him his yard would be returned to normal.)
Empty trucks lined Pine Street, waiting their turn to be filled with the dumped coal.
“I’m hoping they fix the tracks this time,” Mudd said. “I think they will. They have to do something.”
No one was injured in either derailment and no evacuations were required, said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis. About a dozen cars derailed Thursday, and 10 tipped and spilled coal. He said officials had not pinned down a cause for why the train cars jumped the tracks but that 250 feet of tracks will be replaced.
Jana Creamer, 37, lives across the street from Mudd. She has lived in Evansville for most of her life. She couldn’t recall even one derailment before the two this past week.
Said Creamer, as she looked outside her front door: “I hope they fix it — all the way.”