(The following article by Danny Gallagher was posted on the McKinney Courier-Gazette website on September 28.)
MCKINNEY, Texas — Two trains running on the Kansas City Southern railroad line derailed early Wednesday morning sending emergency response officials and clean-up crews racing to the scene.
Collin County Spokeswoman Leigh Hornsby said the trains derailed at 2 a.m. near the intersection of S.H. 78 and F.M. 1778 in Copeville. The intersection is located in the eastern portion of Collin County east of Lake Lavon between Farmersville and Nevada.
Hornsby said Kansas City Southern HAZMAT teams and officials as well as Collin County emergency response teams and sheriff’s deputies are still on the scene cleaning up the wreck and trying to figure out how the cars got off the track.
Hornsby said at least two cars from one of the trains and eight from the other derailed. One of the derailed cars was a tanker that contained chlorine, and others were empty but contained some petroleum by-product residue. She said none of the tankers broke open or have leaked any of the chemicals they were transporting.
She also said those people who were on the trains were not injured or did not need to be transported to nearby hospitals.
Lt. John Norton of the Collin County Sheriff’s Office was at the accident scene this morning and described the wreckage.
“It looked like one or more of the cars came off and struck an unmaned standing train and it derailed,” Norton said.
Vehicles are being routed around the wreckage, but Norton said it didn’t cause a huge disruption to the early morning flow of traffic and described it as a “pretty minor traffic inconvenience.”
Hornsby said crews will need the rest of the day to clean up the derailment.
“There’s no structural damage to the cars,” Hornsby said. “So it’s just a matter of moving them out.”
Norton said given the nature of the accident, it could have been a lot worse.
“After it’s really all said and done, there were no leaks, injuries or evacuations, and it was a minor traffic disruption,” Norton said.
A representative of Kansas City Southern was contacted, but a statement could not be obtained by presstime.