Eastern Railroad Discussion > CSX Q596 Derailment - Grant Park, IL

Tonight at 8pm CSX Q596-18 derailed 20 cars in Grant Park, IL. Haz-mat involved (ethanol and waste oil) but no imposing threat. 50 homes evacuated, but have already returned by midnight. Pile-up blocking both mains, cars in the ditch on both sides, track tore up. Let me tell you, this is where the term "pile-up" comes from! They are stacked up on top of each other, under each other, sideways, upside down, some are standing almost completely on their ends. I was on the train right behind them and we cut their train off at the derailment and pulled south of town to clear the crossings. Q596 continued to Chicago with the 13 head cars that were still on the rails. Nobody hurt, no property damage other than railroad. Prelim estimate was $239,000.

What a night.

So was this derailment north or south of the Highway 1 crossing? Or did it happen in front of the grain elevator? Having been thru this town before, I'm trying to get a mental picture of where this happened. Do you know if UP is using the old SP as a detour route or not? I'd imagine CSX would detour trains onto the Big Four at Terre Haute and send them either up the Monon or across to Marion, OH and up the C&O to Fostoria where they'd turn back onto the B&O and head for Chi-town.
NEtower

It'd be slow going on the Monon, but probably quicker than going all
the way to Marion OH and back ;) There's no signals (and probably no
sidings) between Greencastle and Crawfordsville, and I believe only
one long siding between Crawfordsville and Lafayette.

Q-121 at Deshler Ohio entering southwest transfer at 9;00 AM.

The derailment happend about 1/4 mile north of the road two road crossings in town. Both crossings, including Route 1 were blocked by the rear half of the train, which we had to go retrieve. My guess is he had a hot journal which the detector got (not in time however!) and the axle failed and the the car derailed. The crossings in town (atleast the northern-most one) were tore up, so they dragged the car through town, and when it hit the elevator switch, the ensuing derailment unfolded.

I'm not seeing any UP detours. NOTHING called out of Chicago south except a WPRGPW work train - Proviso to Grant Park. Also no northbounds from Villa Grove. Only one northbound train on the line-up in St. Louis, (MASPR) which has been called, but it is not on the line-up in Villa Grove. I will keep searching for reroutes as they may be sending them further around then the Joliet and Springfield Subs.

Thanks for the update, now I can picture where this took place. Sounds like it was just north of town then. Is there anyway UP could detour a train to Peoria and then up to the Geneva Sub at Nelson? Thats the only other possible way I can think of that they'd try and detour stuff from St. Louis to Chicago.
NEtower

Sorry, folks, I am still confused. Where the hell is Grant Park?

On CSX or IHB or ??? Near what Jct.?

MEKoch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sorry, folks, I am still confused. Where the hell
> is Grant Park?
>
> On CSX or IHB or ??? Near what Jct.?

It is on the UP/CSX Villa Grove sub, which is the old C&EI. It is about ten miles south of Beecher, IL.

Grant Park is about 50 miles or so straight south of Chicago. UP owns the tracks and CSX has trackage rights from Woodland Junction up to 80th Street where UP tracks dump into the BRC.

It sounds like things are moving again. They are calling crews out of Villa Grove for the northbound trains, and they are calling southbounds out of Chicago as well. Work train was called at 0600 this morning with a recrew at 1500...WPRGPW with 10 loads of ballast and 4 flats of track panels.

This is actually a jointly owned line from Dolton Jct to Woodland Jct, not CSX operating on trackage rights. The UP dispatches the line and does the maintenance. UP also operates the local service, but CSX has rights to the customers. The joint ownership goes back to the L&N getting the line to Evansville after the MP bought the C&EI. The joint ownership of the line can lead to some interesting meetings between the railroad's operating departments about the equatable handling of trains by the UP dispatchers.

I just got home from pulling MCHPB from the Belt to yard center.
Normall the road crew does this but since at the time when we were called
nothing was moving south of Yard Center they called us the yard crew
to pull PB today.

On the way towards Yard Center they had recrewed CSX Q129 which was
sitting at yard center and started him south. Also a road crew
was on duty at Yard Center to pull MPRAS out so they must be
close to having some limited movement already.

I didn't stick around long enough to find out, 5 hours on duty
and we were done.

Dave
CSU

Ironically, I brought that MCHPB-18 down to Villa Grove. The crew on MPRAS was the same crew that was on that PB at the BRC and had to be relieved after getting through a switch up there. It was combined with MCHPB-17 which was anulled due to the derailment according to our beloved 3rd shift yardmaster. 118 cars.

Main #1 was opened probably around 9 or 10. We were the second train past the site since the derail; MPRAS being the first. They used 4 flat bed semi's and 1 flat car of track panels, and 7 cars of ballast. Good for 25mph. #2 should be open by now (7 am). CSX was running a J-100, I'm assuming to the rear end of the Q596 which was sitting right where we left it, along with the QNLCH.

Ahhh, it's a small world isn't it, and I see we
have a mutual fondness for our 3rd trick yardmaster.LOL

We didn't contribute much to that beast of a train you
had, we only brought 15 cars out of the Belt and tied
it down in 16.

Stay safe,

Dave
CSU