Authorities in Baltimore County were responding to a report of a train derailment in the White Marsh area that caused a loud explosion and sent a plume of white smoke into the sky that could be seen clearly from downtown Baltimore.
Baltimore County police posted to Twitter that a cargo train had derailed in the 7500 block of Lake Drive, near an industrial park. Initial reports were that no one was hurt, but hazardous material teams were responding to the scene…"
I looked at the pics and whatnot, I did not see the locomotives ?? Is it fuel burning from a ruptured locomotive fuel tank? Sodium Chlorate does not readily burn…
I’m especially impressed that the youtube correspondents thought to bring their baby with them for the on-the-spot report. He is evidently being immersed in a Baltimore language course.
"Train collides with garbage truck and derails, with explosion, flames near Baltimore, Maryland.""News footage shows a massive zig-zag of cars in Rosedale."
And this from TRAINSNEWSWIRE Story by Alexander V. Mithchell IV of this date: [snip}
FTA:"…The collision between the train and a rollaway refuse container truck occurred at a private crossing leading to an industrial equipment site on the south side of the tracks. About a dozen cars have derailed at the front of the train. One car of sodium chlorate is among tho
Oh my gosh i just found out about this that is NUTS, I mean A TRUCK DOSENT SEE A TRAIN OK REALLY.[banghead] Great i bet some Skippy go lucky railfan waiting for that train and a TRUCK hits it and BOOM bye bye train. gosh sometimes people really bug me. BTW this is just my opinion.
Some nice snips from the NY Daily News online article, for the journalist bashers out there:
First, one of the cleanest leads I have seen in quite a while:
“A freight train derailed near Baltimore Tuesday after colliding with a garbage truck at a railroad crossing, triggering an explosion, flames and black smoke felt and seen miles away.”
Some good news:
“Two people aboard the CSX train escaped injury, officials said.”
The truck owner probably only carries 1-2 million in insurance. Good luck. You cannot get blood out of a turnip. A friend who is a highway patrol officer says that virtually every truck inspected at a weigh station has atleast one equipment violation. Is it any wonder that we have so many truck wrecks? Have you ever seen an 18 wheeler going the speed limit on a freeway? Good luck finding one obeying the speed law.
Obviously it should be no mystery as to what the train was carrying.
The derailment caused a big explosion, so it ought to be rather obvious what material exploded. There was plenty of buzz about the possibility of hazardous materials. Is there no curiosity in the news media about what it was that exploded? Somebody here speculated that it was ammonium nitrate. I have understood that A.N. will not explode when exposed to fire in quantities as small as railcars.
Couple of comments. Could the explosion been the fuel in one of the locomotive fuel tanks? Diesel will make a big whallup but it burns slower then other combustibles. (hence a big fire ball but not a lot of blown out windows). Most of the larger truck companies govern their trucks. (That’s why they don’t speed in ND). 2 million dollars in liability insurance makes truck companies big targets for lawyers. It usually guaranties that there is money to pay damages regardless of who caused the accident. Regretably this did send one person to the hospital. The person behind the wheel of the truck. From what I heard the train crew fortunately was able to walk away from this. Rgds IGN
But there was indeed a lot of blown out windows. From the sketchy news and the aerial images, it seems that the entire face of the adjacent building was heavily damaged, including the destruction of all windows. And that appears to be maybe 100 feet back from the tracks.
It is hard to tell from those spectator videos, but one appears to have knocked people off their feet, and they were many hundreds of feet away. So it was a powerful explosion. I would say it was dozens of times more powerful than the Boston bombing explosion, for example.