THOMPSONVILLE, Ill. — Nineteen cars of a Canadian National coal train derailed Friday near Thompsonville in Southern Illinois, WPSD-TV reports. No injuries were reported.
Brian Burgess, director of the Williamson County Emergency Management Agency, told the station that the derailment occurred in a remote area of the county. “It’s just a slip off the track with some coal spillage. Nothing major,” he said.
Crawford Road is closed at the derailment site, officials said.
The derailment is on CN’s Bluford Subdivision, about 60 miles north of the Illinois-Kentucky state line at Metropolis, Ill. It also about 35 miles east of Carbondale, Ill.
C.N. has slashed maintenance budgets. Not at all surprising. In Saskatchewan alone in the month of December had 2 main line derailments and countless broken rails. At 2 of those broken rails caused a shutdown of several hours. They blame the weather, but I’ve never seen it this bad in my almost 20 years. Let’s not forget how many locomotives have been failing lately as well.
This subdivision has a large quantity of switches for coal mine branches, active and retired, plus several sidings for freight bypass. After Illinois cut the taxes on high sulphur coal, the mines, both strip and deep shaft have been booming.
Most people don’t know that there are hundreds of square miles of mine shafts, some 300-600 feet down and about 6 feet high over most of central and southern Illinois.
One retired mine near Keensburg, Illinois is nearly 250 square miles, all underground.