(The following story by Chip Thompson appeared on the Twin Falls Times-News website on October 27.)
MINIDOKA, Idaho — A broken rail was determined to have caused the derailment of 26 rail cars near the city of Minidoka on Sept. 26.
“It was caused by a broken rail that fractured from the top of the rail down,” said John Bromley, director of public affairs for Union Pacific Railroad.
The train carrying frozen fruit and vegetables originated near Hermiston, Ore., bound for North Platte, Neb., Bromley said. It derailed a few miles west of Minidoka and no injuries were reported. Crews from Union Pacific had the line repaired within 24 hours.
“Rails can break under severe weather changes or as the result of hidden fissures, which break over time,” Bromley said. “It’s similar to bending a paper clip over and over until it breaks.”
Bromley said the railroad spends more than $1 billion annually maintaining its tracks and that visual and ultra-sound inspections of rails are done at regular intervals.
“We rebuild our railroad on an ongoing basis,” Bromley said, adding that the line through Minidoka County is a major route so it receives regular attention.
The cost of the cleanup and repairs to utility poles in the area were paid by Union Pacific, but Bromley declined to comment on the dollar amount associated with the damages.
While some cars had doors torn off or walls punctured during the derailment, others remained relatively intact, meaning that the frozen product could be salvaged for up to five days after the accident. Product could only be salvaged from about nine of the 26 cars that derailed.
Gene Timmons, of Gene’s Towing, estimated that as many as 27 semi-truck loads of frozen products were rescued from the train and transported to Americold Logistics in Burley.
Workers from Pocatello-based Jack B. Parson Co. sorted out the mangled cars at the site while crews from various temporary employment agencies salvaged what product they could.
The derailment was the second in the Mini-Cassia area in the last seven months.
On March 6 a slow-moving Eastern Idaho Railroad train derailed seven cars full of grain in Burley near the crossing at Occidental Avenue. No injuries were reported and the cause was believed to be a combination of several factors, Train Master Tim Swearingen said.
Swearingen said the cause could have been soft ground under the tracks, train handling, bad rail ties or a lack of bedrock beneath a section of track. He said that damage to the rails was so extensive that it was difficult to determine the exact cause, but that it was most likely a combination of more than one factor.