ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 12, 1996 TAG: 9601120041
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
The new snowfall forecast for today could further delay cleanup of Sunday's major grain-train derailment near Ellett in Montgomery County, a Norfolk Southern official said.
"This storm tonight could really throw a monkey wrench in things," said NS spokesman Bob Auman.
Eighty-one of 99 cars loaded with corn derailed at 9 a.m. Sunday during the weekend's record-setting snowstorm, which dumped 34 inches on nearby Blacksburg. The train's two locomotives remained on the tracks.
A cause remains undetermined, Auman said. The railroad estimated the damage to the cars at $1.5 million and the grain at $1 million. Those figures don't include the cleanup cost.
Norfolk Southern cleared the tracks of the damaged grain cars this week and reopened the route Wednesday morning (the first train passed through at 1 p.m.). But the twisted and heaped cars - and the 8,100 tons of ruined corn - remain scattered on an Ellett Valley hillside just east of the Lusters Gate Road underpass.
The railroad has obtained bids to have the rail cars cut up into scrap and removed. It is about to award contracts for the work, but "There's no way to estimate when the work would be done given the uncertainty of the weather," Auman said.
And the contents? "We will have the corn removed," he said. "We have promised the landowner to restore his property as much as possible to the condition it was in prior to the derailment."
The eastbound train was headed from Indiana to North Carolina when the accident occurred. No one was injured.
LENGTH: Short : 38 linesby CNB