FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Last Saturday’s derailment of CSX railcars that damaged garages at a Fredericksburg apartment complex involved runaways, a CSX representative said at a community meeting on Wednesday, July 24.
“One section of the train was tied down improperly,” CSX State Relations Director Randy Marcus told the meeting, according to a WUSA-TV report. Those cars began rolling, hit a derail device, and overturned. They then hit a soundwall, which collapsed into and damaged four garages at the Cobblestone Square development [see “CSX train derails, damaging garages …,” Trains News Wire, July 21, 2024].
Marcus said the train’s locomotive was having mechanical problems, so the crew left its cars on yard tracks in order to return to Richmond, Va., with the locomotive. He also said the derail was clearly improperly placed too close to the adjacent properties and will be relocated. The railroad will also provide additional training to employees to address such situations, he said.
Mayor Kerry Devine, who arranged the meeting to address community concerns following the derailment, said there was a need for more transparency and additional ways to prevent a recurrence of the incident.
“We don’t want this to happen again,” Devine told the station. “We do live in close proximities throughout our town to the rails, so any accident could become a major thing.”
Perhaps some personal liability for damages caused by failure to secure equipment properly would encourage railroad workers to follow the rules and procedures more closely. This type of incident is all too common and easily preventable.
I love how “Transparency” is now the buzz words of any government official. This was an accident, not a planned event. Was the railroad supposed to read the minds of the train crew and then notify the town? “$**t happens,” as the saying goes. Now if the railroad has an operating plan that included defective tie-down rules, then that would be a case for transparency.
The “Transparency” is that they are saying what went wrong and how they are going to try to stop it from happening again. In the past it was just that it happened and they would look into how to prevent it from happening again without any details.