Freight train derails, spills corn
BNSF moves to clean up before it attracts bears
HELENA – A BNSF Railway freight train derailed in northwestern Montana early Monday, blocking tracks and spilling corn destined for export from the West Coast.
The derailment also disrupted Amtrak passenger service. Travelers on Amtrak’s Chicago-Seattle train, the Empire Builder, were put aboard buses for part of their Montana travel after 10 cars in the 110-car freight train derailed at dawn about 45 miles east of Libby.
The train was hauling corn from Halloway, Minn., to Tacoma, said Gus Melonas, a spokesman in Seattle for Texas-based BNSF.
Similar derailments involving grain spillage farther east near Glacier National Park generated criticism of the railroad in years past because grain that wasn’t cleaned up attracted grizzly bears. Trains struck and killed eight of them in the 1980s.
Melonas said only one car in the derailment Monday spilled corn and not all 110 tons in the car were lost. Grain on the ground was being vacuumed, he said.
“We are mobilizing equipment to make sure we don’t attract any wildlife,” he said. The derailment area “generally is not a grizzly bear area, but we’ve had some bears in recent years drift over from the Whitefish Range, in that direction,” said Jerry Brown of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Melonas said the track was expected to reopen at midnight Monday, but removing railcars from the area could take up to three weeks.
Blockage of the track required that passengers on the Empire Builder, which crosses the state’s northern tier daily, travel by bus for the 250 miles or so between Libby and the Montana town of Shelby.
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said some 460 eastbound passengers were to have left Libby on the Empire Builder at about 5:30 a.m. MST Monday but instead awaited midday buses for the trip to Shelby and the resumption of train travel. The derailment was unlikely to cause much delay for passengers heading west later in the day, Magliari said.
Melonas said up to 45 trains a day use the route that includes the derailment site. Some of the freight trains would be detoured, he said.
He said eight of the derailed cars were moved to the side of the track and two were “rerailed.”
No one was injured in the derailment and its cause was unknown, Melonas said.