Freight Train

CSX completed yesterday the cleanup after a train derailment Sunday in Sykesville, a spokesman said. All of the freight cars that derailed were back on the track and ready to move on to their destination, and coal that was spilled in the derailment was cleaned up, said CSX spokesman Dan Murphy. He added that CSX was in the final stages of repairing and resurfacing the track with the goal of resuming train traffic last night. A freight train with two locomotives and 143 cars was traveling from Cumberland to Curtis Bay when about 20 of the cars derailed Sunday morning in Sykesville.

GRANITEVILLE, S.C. - A lethal plume of chlorine leaking from a shattered rail tanker car kept 5,000 residents of this mill town away from their homes and forced officials to bring in repair crews a day after a pre-dawn train wreck and chemical spill killed eight people and sent scores to hospitals. A rapid response by local emergency officials in the hours after two trains collided Thursday morning helped evacuate hundreds of residents from a "hot zone" of contamination around the still-volatile wreck.

LOS ANGELES - Federal investigators say they will seek the cell phone records of two teenagers and a train engineer as they probe whether text messages factored into a fiery commuter train crash that killed 25 in Southern California. Kitty Higgins, a board member for the National Transportation Safety Board, says her agency is also talking with the two teens and their families. The teens told KCBS-TV that they received a text message from the engineer at 4:22 p.m. Friday, just moments before the deadly crash.

Loved ones and friends prepared to say goodbye to the two young women who perished in a train derailment in Ellicott City as the first of the viewings began Thursday evening. Cars lined both sides of the quiet residential street leading up to the Church of the Resurrection in Ellicott City for the viewing for Elizabeth Conway Nass. At 6 p.m., about 100 people stood queued down a brick stairway of the Roman Catholic church from a sprawling parking lot where most of the spots were filled.

Night Train Is UnbearableMy complaint is about the freight train that runs on the light rail tracks during the middle of the night. The noise this freight train makes is enough to wake the dead. . . .Linthicum used to be a nice, quiet place to live but it isn't anymore. . . . We've never had to put up with having a loss of sleep night after night.Years ago, this freight train ran during the day. That was fine, there were no problems and we all got our sleep. Now there is no set schedule. This freight train could come by and wake you up at 1:30 in the morning or 2:30 a.m. or 3:30 a.m. or 4:30 a.m. It also blows an extremely loud whistle before each road crossing.

In Baltimore CityMan's condition critical after freight train hits him, severs his legsA Baltimore County man's legs were severed early yesterday when he was struck by a Conrail freight train in the 4900 block of E. Lombard St., city traffic police said.Kevin Thomas, 19, of the 9800 block of Charbank Lane in Middle River apparently was trying to cross the track about 2: 45 a.m. when he was struck by the train, which severed his legs and dragged him more than 200 yards. Workers on another Conrail freight train spotted the blood and found Thomas lying on the track, police said.

25 years agoThe Centennial Celebration for Union Bridge will begin at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 12. A parade including antique cars, Civil War Memorial marching units, beauty contest finalists and National Brewery Shire Horses and Antique Wagon will begin at the community center and march down Main Street to the Mitchell Transport property at the end of town. Free movies will be shown by the trucking company afterward, and the culmination of the evening will be the crowning of the Centennial Queen, Miss Union Bridge, by Mayor Richard L. Stultz.

The tendency whenever a pedestrian is involved in a train accident is to assume a suicide or some other horrible error on the part of the victim. But in the case of a 39-year-old woman who was struck and killed by a northbound CSX freight train as she walked on a pedestrian crosswalk at the MARC train depot in Laurel Tuesday, the normal assumptions seem not to apply.There is no evidence that Marsha E. Saponari intended to commit suicide when she crossed the tracks shortly after 8:30 a.m. on her way to work in Washington.

A 22-year-old man remained in critical condition at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center with severe burns suffered when he fell from a bridge through high-voltage power lines and landed atop a passing freight train on the Susquehanna River Bridge in Perryville early yesterday.John Dealy, the victim, worked for Clipper City, a cruise ship docked at the Tidewater Marina in Havre de Grace, said Havre de Grace police Lt. John VanGilder.Mr. Dealy, whose address was unavailable, suffered second- and third-degree burns when he hit the 11,000-volt wires, said Howard Robertson, a spokesman for Amtrak, which owns the rail line.

A father and daughter were indicted yesterday on federal fraud charges for allegedly running schemes to swindle money from automobile and accident insurance companies, federal and state prosecutors said.Maurice Wilson, 70, and his daughter Deborah Kolodner, 40, face mail and wire fraud charges relating to a business they ran called Industrial Medical and Physical Therapy on St. Paul Place in Baltimore.U.S. Attorney Lynne A. Battaglia and Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. said in a statement that false and inflated bills were submitted to insurance companies.