(The following story by Dustin Kass appeared on the Tomah Journal website on December 22.)
DRESBACH, Minn. — The rail line near Dresbach reopened to train traffic Thursday night, just one day after the section of tracks was the site of a collision between two Canadian Pacific freight trains.
Contractors and Canadian Pacific employees spent the day fixing the stretch of tracks, allowing for normal rail traffic to move through the area. The work also may have increased the environmental impacts of the crash when vibrations from machinery used in the cleanup caused two tankers carrying liquid fertilizer to slide onto the embankment along the Missi-ssippi River, spilling an estimated 31,000 gallons into the river.
Normal Amtrak service was expected to resume with the opened rail line, including normal service at the Tomah train depot. The damage forced the company to reroute its trains, and local passengers were taken by bus either to Chicago or the Twin Cities to catch the train.
Two westbound trains collided at about 5 a.m. Wednesday where the main line is flanked by a siding, a stretch of tracks where one train could pass another. A 15-car train crashed into the midpoint of a 100-car train, said Winona County Sheriff Dave Brand. No one on board was seriously injured.
Canadian Pacific and Federal Railroad Administration officials have launched investigations into the collision, which sent the front locomotive engine of the smaller train into the river. It remained there Thursday. A crane able to haul the engine out of the water was not available until the weekend.
Truckloads of heavy equipment started arriving at the site Wednesday night. Working through the night, trucks hauled some damaged cars away, and heavy machinery moved other crumpled cars away from the tracks, a process that finished at 4:30 a.m. Thursday, Johnson said.
Crews and engineers then started repairing the damaged line, he said. The line was opened at 5:45 p.m., though a 10 mph speed limit through the area will remain indefinitely.