Derailed train in North Canaan brings in emergency crew

NORTH CANAAN — A train derailment Friday evening, May 13, created a weekend-long spectacle in the center of town. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon Monday that an emergency crew arrived to begin the arduous process of setting a string of railcars back on a siding to be hauled away by the North Canaan-based Housatonic Railroad Company.Six empty bulk containers, destined for the Specialty Minerals plant on Daisy Hill Road, ended up straddling the rail spur just beyond the crossing on Main Street near McDonald’s. The last car sat at the road’s edge. Damage included deep scoring along the road from the steel train wheels. An embankment on the south side of the crossing was gouged by the train. Two sidewalk sections on the other side of the crossing were dislodged.Countless photos and videos were taken throughout the weekend by those who came to see for themselves, as word spread. To anyone who walked back along the spur, as it curves along in front of Canaan Union Station, it was apparent that the spur crossing was not where the train derailed. Train wheels cut a swath of damage as they ran over wooden ties between the rails. Below the gouge in the embankment, a section of rail was badly bent. It had to be replaced before another engine could be run on the spur to eventually pull out the derailed cars.It seems likely the derailment began at the edge of the main crossing at the beginning of the spur. The train would have been headed south across Main Street on the main line. At the very edge of the paved road, the spur forks off. Gouge marks show clearly the wheels missed the pointed end of the spur rail. One side of the spur rail was in the open position, to allow the train wheels to catch it. The other side was not. Officials from the Housatonic Railroad Co. and the Department of Transportation, which owns the main rail line, did not return calls for comment.At 3 p.m. Monday, Main Street was closed from the Route 7/North Elm Street intersection to Granite Avenue. Vehicles were allowed in to get to businesses. While railroad workers and state police troopers kept a growing crowd of spectators out of potential harm’s way, there was other drama, such as the speeding, inattentive driver who slammed on his brakes and slid to a stop just before hitting the locomotive blocking the road.A crew from Winter’s Rigging Inc. drove eight hours from North Collins, N.Y., near Buffalo, to apply their expertise, using two cranes, a welding torch and lots of chains and cable. The heavy cranes with their bulldozer-type treads tore up the sidewalk to the east of the crossing. There was just enough room for them to squeeze the vehicles in between the tracks and a line of trees. They chained the wheel assemblies to the rail cars, which are normally attached only by pins and gravity. By lifting each end of the cars separately, and using subtle tugs from the engine, they were able to jockey the wheels back onto the rails.