Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF Derailment: Minot, ND

Good morning all -

Just heard on CNN that a BNSF freight train derailed in or near Minot, ND; report came into CNN @ 8:20 AM (Mountain) and there are two injuries to law enforcement personnel due to exposure to Ammonious Androhoxide (sp). No information on train symbols, direction or other injuries or evacuations.

I am having my friend at the local news station here (Grand Forks) look into things. Checked Amtrak's website and they showed the westbound Empire Builder to be on time (departing Minot at 0906, which is right before the report came to CNN). It is possible of course that the accident was on CP as well. For anyone unfamiliar with Minot, the BNSF main (ex-GN high line) crosses the CP main (former SOO) pretty much right in downtown Minot. If anyone wants to know why it is dubbed the "Magic City" I can tell you that as well. Anyways, if anyone at BNSF or CP has any info on this please let us know. I have a very quiet weekend coming up and perhaps a service interruption will cause a fanning feast somewhere.

Kyle Rasmussen
Grand Forks, ND

Check out the story in the Minot Daily News. The CP train of 112 cars derailed five cars on the west end of Minot at 1:40 AM. Temperatures were reported to be around five below at the time of the accident.

Besides the one death, local paramedics report 60-75 persons taken to local hospital. The newspaper reported the chemical as anhydrous ammonia.

http://www.kgw.com/kgwnews/nationworld_story.html?StoryID=35083

AP Wire Report via KGW (Portland, OR): Canadian Pacific (Soo Line), NOT BNSF as I earlier stated. One dead, unknown cause at this time.

<http://216.221.101.55:591/daily/FMPro?-DB=page.one.a.fp5&amp;-Format=minot5.html&amp;-lay=main&amp;story_one=1/18/2002|1&-Max=1&-Find>

I got some weird errors getting to this site, but once I got through, looks like the derailment is also affecting newspaper delivery west of Minot.

The Minot newspaper link was not working.
Try http://www.bismarcktribune.com/ or http://www.bismarcktribune.com/display/inn_breakingnews/brk01.txt

>>
The derailment, which happened about 1:40 a.m., knocked out power to parts of Minot and to Burlington, a small town just to the west. But as daylight approached, officials saw hopeful signs.
<<

There was a derailment in Burlington back in February 1994.

I wonder if CP will be rerouting some traffic around the site? Since it's west of Minot, most likely any reroutes would be via Winnipeg on their own rails. To the best of my knowledge, the next rail border crossing west of Portal, ND is on the Shelby-Sweetgrass, MT line.

Thanks for the links. My friend said WDAY in Fargo is sending the air unit up to take some aerial photos which should be on the news tonight.

Kyle Rasmussen
Grand Forks, ND

Even with my DSL connection, it took a long time to make the connection. I can understand a 56K or lower modem taking forever...
Emmett

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/01/18/minot.chemical.leak/index.html

Regarding the comment above about DSL, my old fashioned 56K just did it in 25 seconds. I don't consider that very long. So much for DSL. Mark D.

Newspaper picture
http://www.minotdailynews.com/2002Train/trainindex.html
Aerial Image
http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/image.asp?S=10&amp;T=1&amp;X=1627&amp;Y=26723&amp;Z=14&amp;W=2

From photos in the first link, the second link appears to be the location. Notice a few houses very nearby to the southeast. There also appears to be a small bridge or trestle at the point of the derailment.

Bryan