Clean Up at Palmer

Clean up continued following a Conrail train derailment in downtown Palmer. The derailment happened early Thursday morning. Officials say the derailment was caused by blocks of granite that fell from a bridge construction project onto the tracks. Several cars jumped the tracks. The Hazardous Materials Team was called in to clean up a small diesel fuel spill from the train. No one was injured in the derailment.

TV-13 struck a retaining wall that collapsed (the wall was part of the main street bridge).This happened at 2:30 am as 3 loco's and 2 or 3 stack units behind the headend derailed, fuel tanks were ruptured and caught fire along with one container that caught fire. TV-13 was on the main with the Conrail C40-8W 6176, SD40-2 6516, and SD60I 5650. Train had forty-four loads,weighed in at 3,688 tons and was 6,427 feet in length.

Both main lines (single and controled siding) were destroyed for several hundred feet and the yard lead. Plan was to swing the main line over to the yard lead after clearing  the wreck and then rebuild the mains.

By early evening CR had tied into the yard lead from CP-83 and had all traffic pass through the site at 5mph while crews removed the derailed stack cars  (buckets) and containers.

Containers were removed and placed on flatbed trucks which would back under as the vans were hanging above. These were moved to a offsite location. The railcars were stacked in the NECR lot for future removal.