NORTH LAKE, Wis. — Eight cars of a 120-car Union Pacific train derailed Saturday in Waukesha County, Wisc., a wire service reported.
No injuries were reported after the train derailed at an overpass of Highway 83 along the Little Oconomowoc River Saturday afternoon.
The train, en route from Chicago to St. Paul, Minn., left an estimated three-mile trail of debris and destroyed part of a bridge.
” We don’t know if the bridge collapsed as a result of the train having problems or if something happened earlier to the train that caused it to derail, ” said Lt. Karen Ruff of the Waukesha County Sheriff’ s Department.
Ruff said a grass fire reported in Sussex shortly before the derailment may have been caused by the train. Authorities also found pieces of the train as far as three miles east of the accident scene.
One car dangled from the north side of the bridge while another was pushed onto an embankment to the south. Other cars piled up behind the wreckage in accordion fashion. Ruff said crews must determine how stable the bridge is before they can begin moving the rail cars.
Mark Davis, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad, said seven of the cars were empty while one carried liquid fertilizer.
Authorities said parts of Highway 83 will likely be closed for several days.
One witness said her motorcycle and a car narrowly escaped flying debris.
” We were just approaching when the accident happened, ” said Peggy Ahles, who lives about a half-mile from the bridge. She and her husband, Bill, were riding home on their motorcycle when the accident happened.
” It was going along normally and all of a sudden it started losing a car, ” Ahles said. ” The train wouldn’ t stop; there was too much momentum. There was a lot of grinding. Any earlier and we would have been under that bridge.”