Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 14, 1990                   TAG: 9004140184
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

SALEM SPARED FUEL WOES BY NEAL THOMPSON NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU

"Everything's fine," Wesley Graham, manager of Salem's Water and Sewer Department, said Friday. "We've been very fortunate that nothing happened to us."

Graham said city workers had been monitoring water flowing from the spill site, but fuel never reached a high enough concentration to force the department to shut down its water intake pumps at Glenvar, about 15 miles from the derailment.

Norfolk Southern Corp. spokesman Don Piedmont said crews had been working around the clock and at 12:30 a.m. Friday the tracks were cleared and open for service. The first train passed at 2:50 a.m. Friday. Trains had been rerouted during the cleanup.

Cleanup efforts continued Friday at the site of the wreck that spilled 2,700 gallons of diesel fuel and 100 gallons of lubricating oil in and near the north fork of the river.

The spill occurred when a 142-car Norfolk Southern coal carrier slammed into boulders left by a landslide. The boulders derailed a locomotive, punctured a fuel tank and derailed 12 of the coal cars, dumping more than 1,000 tons of coal on the tracks and nearby yards.

Piedmont said crews will continue to clean up the coal and remove the damaged coal cars and other debris.

"The other stuff will be some time. They'll move those cars and clean it all up, but that may take awhile," Piedmont said. He said he expected that to be completed within the next week or so.