Saturday morning at about 7:25 a.m., a southbound (Cumberland to Rocky Mount) CSX freight encountered a landslide approaching the bridge over the NS trackage near AF interlocking. 30+ cars piled up along the ROW, down on the NS trackage, and knocking one span of the bridge down. There are 2 undamaged mains on another bridge adjacent, and VRE/Amtrak to Manassas and beyond use a separate connecting track to the north of this complex. The NS trackage is just yard tracks.
Alexandria FD photos
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Is the crew alright?
Rusty
Diverging Clear posted:Is the crew alright?
Rusty
Via City of Alexandria:
NTSB briefing @ 5:30pm.
167 car train, 31 cars derailed.
No injuries to crew, civilians, responders. No haz-mat cars involved.
2 tracks of 3 now open as of late Saturday night with 10mph speed limit, CSX moved the cars not derailed.
Cause suspected to be failure of an embankment due to water saturation just beyond north abutment of damaged bridge.
That's good to know, and thank you for the update!
Rusty
My wife was going to visit our daughter in DC for the day and her train was held in Fredericksburg.....once she realized what was happening (and her 7 PM train home was cancelled), she went to Enterprise and rented a car to get back to Richmond.
We’re glad no one was hurt.
Peter
That is not good news for folks who use the VRE and work in DC. That is going to take a bit, The bridge that was hit is in bad shape. They have to call in the structural engineers to check and test it, as reported on the news. If they do not get the OK for that bridge to use, the traffic in DC will be grid locked.
If that was a VRE train that rolled down the side of the hill it would be a major disaster. Thank God it was not.
Update:
Two tracks are open. 10 MPH at accident site, I counted 6 trains on a railcams timeline since 8.20 PM EST, One very large multi unit Amtrak consist of a name train that was at least 20 cars long heading south The rest were freight of various size. it is now 12.51, 6 trains in five hours. That line handels 6 trains in an hour.
Pictures don't do the wreck justice. There's a pile of cars all along the fill on the approach to Cameron Run. There's portions of the wreck untouched from the moment they went down the fill, upside down and all. Track one is still out (just the ties in places, rails went with the cars down the hillside), and we never touched 2 track. No restrictions on track 3, max speed!
Curious how the news attributed delays on Acela since those trains don’t go south of DC Union Station, unless it was domino effect.
Farmer_Bill posted:Curious how the news attributed delays on Acela since those trains don’t go south of DC Union Station, unless it was domino effect.
IT is DC home of the wrong info, gossip, BS. and make believe.
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