(The following story by Gabe Smith appeared on the Commercial Dispatch website on August 21.)
ABERDEEN, Miss. — A Starkville man is dead after driving his county-owned vehicle into the engine of a moving train Monday morning, causing several rail cars to derail from a patch of track in Monroe County on Highway 8 near the Gibson community west of Aberdeen.
Elmer Patton Norwood, 51, of 164A Park Circle in Starkville, was pronounced dead at the scene of the collision.
Norwood and another Oktibbeha County employee had been driving back to Starkville from Wren, where they loaded two county gravel trucks with coal mix to be used in road paving.
About 8.5 miles west of Aberdeen just before 10 a.m., the trucks intersected with a train crossing, where, for reasons yet unknown, Norwood drove his truck into the left side of the lead engine of a southbound Kansas City Southern Railway train.
“He just ran right into it,” said Staff Sgt. Tommy Coleman of the Mississippi Highway Patrol. “(The truck) burst into flames. It was completely destroyed.”
Though the lead engine and a second unmanned locomotive were most directly impacted in the accident, they remained on the track. Four empty rail cars immediately behind the engines, however, were jostled off the track during the collision.
According to Doniele Kane, a communications representative for Kansas City Southern, no engineers were harmed during the accident, and the remaining 16 train cars remained on the track after the collision.
The train was completing a route from Corinth to Artesia. “It was a manifest train,” said Kane, “which means that it was carrying a variety of freight with some loaded and some empty cars. No hazardous materials were involved.”
Though the accident was a fatal one, Coleman said property damage was minimal, in part because of the crossing’s rural locale.
“The road was badly burned, but there’s not a whole lot else out there,” he said.
Highway Patrol officers got basic information on the scene, and area firefighters doused the flames from Norwood’s truck. Cleanup efforts for the derailed cars, though, were out of local officials’ leagues.
Kansas City Southern sent a full-scale cleanup crew from Memphis, with two cranes capable of lifting 133,000 pounds each and equipment for cleaning leaked diesel fuel off of the highway. The cars were successfully lifted back onto the track by 6:45 p.m., said Coleman. The road and the rail line reopened soon after.
The cause of the accident remains under investigation.
Both Coleman and Monroe County Coroner Alan Gurley said warning lights at the crossing were operational and flashing when they responded to the scene. The crossing is equipped with lights only, with no safety arms to block the paths of approaching drivers.
An eastbound driver, who stopped safely on the other side of the track before the train swept past, confirmed that the lights were working, at least on that east side of the crossing.
Coleman said Norwood’s body had been sent to the Mississippi Crime Lab in Jackson for additional testing, and he said it was not clear why the deceased man was unable to stop his vehicle from colliding with the speeding locomotive.
“Between a car and a train, the train’s going to win,” he said.