Crews working to reopen tracks near Fairplay after 26-car Norfolk Southern derailment

FAIRPLAY — Norfolk Southern crews and contractors were clearing a 26-car derailment near Fairplay, with no injuries or hazardous materials spills, Norfolk Southern spokesman Connor Spielmaker said Thursday morning.

The derailment was reported to Washington County Emergency Dispatch at 9:17 p.m. Wednesday between the Tommytown and Bakersville road crossings. However, residents Thursday morning estimated the crash happened sometime between 8 to shortly after 8:30 p.m.

Spielmaker said the incident was reported to Norfolk Southern dispatch around 8:50 p.m.

Spielmaker did not have a preliminary cause for the derailment. Norfolk Southern will investigate and furnish a report to the Federal Railroad Administration, which approves or certifies the report and becomes the keeper of the report, he said. Typically, it takes three to six months from the time of the incident for such a report to become public.

Spielmaker said 26 of the 96 cars were derailed on the Norfolk Southern "merchandise" train with some of the affected cars carrying items such as salt and corn.

Cranes were being moved into the area Thursday morning to help clear the damaged track and move derailed cars so track repairs can be made and traffic on the rails can resume, Spielmaker said.

Spielmaker said while train derailments can be interesting sites people want to see, he urged people to avoid the area because there is a lot of heavy machinery on site and derailed cars could shift.

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"We want people to be safe," he said.

Repairing the damaged track could take time, 24 hours or longer, he said.

Once traffic is resumed on the track, crews will address the derailed cars, Spielmaker said. Some of the cars might be able to be placed back on the track. Otherwise, the cars will be removed. Sometimes damaged cars have to be scrapped on site for removal. Removing the cars can take days or weeks.

Local resident: Knew it was 'something serious'

Judy and Tom Shaw had finished watching "Jeopardy!" and started watching a movie when they heard a loud noise and their home shook "for a second or so," Judy said via phone Thursday morning.

"At first, it sounded like thunder. And I thought, 'Well, they're not calling for any thunderstorms.'"

Her husband, Tom, 82, has lived near that railroad line his entire life, including the past 21 years along Tommytown Road near Bakersville Road.

Shaw said he was reading during the movie when he heard the train engine — and then he didn't.

He said he knew it was "something serious" because "trains don't just shut off ignitions."

His son, Brian, lives closer to the derailment site and informed him it was a "bad" derailment.

Brian Shaw said he heard a loud banging noise, but the noise was "not out of the ordinary" for him because his house is about a quarter mile from the derailment. The engine stopped in front of his house.

"It looks like World War III where the cars are derailed," but there are plenty of crews working on clearing the tracks, Brian Shaw, 51, said Thursday morning. He said the crews were talking like the trains would be running on the track within 24 hours.

For Tom Shaw, this was "probably the fourth" derailment he'd seen during his lifetime. He previously lived on Jordan Road near the tracks.

"When I was 16, they took the steam engines off and went to diesel," he said. When he was 21, they stopped running passenger trains on the nearby tracks.

The previous derailments were always a mess, Tom Shaw said. But the one Wednesday night "is one of the biggest messes."

"This one really busted up a lot of stuff. ... (The track) looked like a piece of thread hanging down the bank," Shaw said.

While the track is twisted and bent, there were train cars "twisted around in circles," Shaw said of the pileups.

"It's just unbelievable, what I'm standing here looking at," he said Thursday morning in the daylight.

Shaw said there also were numerous large cranes, five where he was and more back in a field.

"These cranes are out here flipping these railroad cars around like they're nothing," Shaw said.

The equipment moved in around the derailment site was tearing up a field where Shaw said he plants soybeans. The heavy equipment packed the soft ground down to being "like concrete" and he estimated it could be at least five years before he could plant there again.

Shaw said he'd already talked to a Norfolk Southern representative Thursday morning who told him the railroad would help with the field damage.

Discrepancy in number of train cars affected

Washington County Emergency Services Director R. David Hays said local authorities counted over 40 train cars affected overnight in the dark, with two big pileups of cars in two sections of the train.

Spielmaker said the 40-car reference might refer to the stretch of cars from where the derailment began to where it ended. One pileup affected 16 cars, then there was a section of 10 derailed cars.

Hays said the larger number of locally estimated affected cars included ones derailed and ones "impacted from movement from the track" with a number of them overturned. Some of the affected cars were carrying rock salt and yellow wheat flour, he said.

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Spielmaker said the train was heading south from East Binghamton, N.Y., to Roanoke, Va.

The Community Volunteer Fire Company Inc. of District 12, based in nearby Fairplay, was the first to respond to the derailment, Hays said.

Hays estimated 25 to 30 local emergency responders went to the derailment, including firefighters from District 12 and Sharpsburg, county Division of Emergency Services firefighters stationed with both fire companies, the county's hazardous materials unit, county emergency management and a safety officer from the Washington County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association.

Norfolk Southern crews and contractors also responded immediately, Spielmaker wrote in an email.

Railroad dispatch also would have immediately started directing train traffic away from the affected track, Spielmaker said via phone.

Hays said the derailment was across the street from a few houses and folks at home would have heard it in a "big way."

Hays recommended people avoid the Tommytown and Bakersville road areas for 24 to 72 hours.

Tommytown is a back road where drivers sometimes have to pull to the shoulder to let another vehicle pass, Hays said. Cranes were being moved through Tommytown Road to get to the derailment area.

Bakersville Road is a two-lane county road with a marked center line and marked shoulder lines, but no shoulders, Hays said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Norfolk Southern train derails near Sharpsburg, Maryland