After Derailment, No Amtrak Train Service Into And Out Of Denver For 3 Days
DENVER (CBS4)- - An Amtrak train carrying more than 175 passengers from California to Chicago derailed Friday after striking equipment on the tracks in southwest Nebraska.
Twenty-two people were injured, 20 of them on the train. Those injured were taken to hospitals were they were treated for back, shoulder and neck injuries. None of the injuries were critical.
The train was already running eight hours behind when it arrived in Denver after hitting a car in Utah. For those who stayed on the train, their trip got even worse.
Two locomotives tipped on their sides and three of the California Zephyr's 10 passenger cars left the tracks about 8 a.m. near Benkelman, near the state's borders with Kansas and Colorado, said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari. Seven other passenger cars remained on the track.
The crash will halt Amtrak service into and out of Denver for three days.
Amtrak will bring a bus with westbound passengers from Nebraska arriving in Denver at about 2 a.m. Saturday. Those passengers will then board a train arriving from west which will then turn around and take passengers toward California.
Watch video from Copter4 taken after the derailment below.
As for those passengers heading eastbound, there is no arrival time for a bus to take passengers to Chicago.
Those who were not hurt were taken on school buses to a local high school to wait.
The train tracks remain closed, causing a delay for those waiting for other train passengers.
"They were supposed to be here at 7:15 a.m. They ran into a flood on the way and they were 6 hours late," said friend of Amtrak passenger Clarence Scott.
"We need to be in San Francisco in a couple of days to fly home. I don't know if that's going to be achievable now," said Amtrak passenger Matt Welsh.
The crane was tearing down an old grain bin about 4 miles west of Benkelman, Frasier said.
Magliari said somehow the train collided with the crane.
"Our understanding is a portion of a crane working on a demolition project near the tracks became an obstruction to us as our train approached. Because a portion of this train was obstructing the tracks, we collided with it," he said.
"For us to contact it, it had to be obstructing the tracks somehow, either across the tracks or laying on laying on the tracks, or somehow obstructing the path of the train," Magliari said.
It was unclear how fast the train was going through the relatively unpopulated stretch of southwest Nebraska, but the accident was being investigated.
