While driving to work today, I noticed a derailment on the east-west track at Westminster junction in Saint Paul, Minnesota. These are the Union Pacfic tracks (I believe), and a number of what look like coal hoppers were tangled up. The local news has reported nothing on this.
Anyone have a clue?
Haven’t heard of a derailment yet, but on my way home this morning we went down the St. Paul sub and saw that coal train sitting at Westminster. However, we didn’t hear anything special on the radio. I’ll post if I hear something.
I went back last night, and this is what I found out from a guy watching the repairs with his son. The guy said he worked at a building next to the tracks right there.
Apparently, at 5 AM on October 18, a bad wheel caused the derailment of nine coal hoppers at the turnout linking the west-bound tracks heading towards Minneapolis with the the eastern tracks on Saint Paul’s east side.
When I got there last night, lots of heavy equipment, men, and portable floodlights were in evidence. The hoppers were upside-down in a line against the embankment of the road crossing over the tracks. The wheelsets were on the other side of the flat space, piled in a line. The coal was in a big pile, and trucks were vacuuming it out from the track area, while bull-dozers carried it to the pile.
This morning, there was still some work going on. Again, nothing on our local news about it.
Here’s a link to the Google map of the junction. I was on the Mississippi street bridge, looking at the track to the east.
Jacob, because of the location and the fact that it was just coal, it wasn’t really a very newsworthy story in the real world. I can’t quite tell from your description which way the train was headed.
My guess is it was headed up the east leg of the wye, bound for the Xcel’s King power plant in Bayport. However, UP coal trains could also be headed west over the BNSF bound for the Duluth area.
If it was the Bayport train, which runs 3 times per week, it had power on both ends, making it very easy to pull all of the uneffected cars out of the way quickly.
From a traffic perspective, there are alternate routes past that location. The only thing that might be totally closed would be UP’s Altoona Sub. If the derailment didn’t take out the east switch, there would still be limited acccess.
Look at it this way, no injuries, no hazmat, no story. If it bleeds it leads.
From the railroad’s perspective, the derailment a mile and a half east at Hoffman, earlier this year, was a much bigger traffic problem, as it had both CP and BNSF mains to Chicago completely blocked with no alternates.
Photos of this wreck are already on www.railpictures.net