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Politics & Government

More Time Needed to Clear Derailed Train Cars

Railway officials say it may be a few days before the cars are removed and the area is clear.

A railway official predicted the track work associated with a train derailment near would be finished Wednesday, but removing the railcars and other clean-up might take a few more days.

“We expect that most of the track work to be complete this afternoon,” said Mike Peters, who is the chief commercial officer for OmniTRAX, the management company for Illinois Railnet. “There will be some on-going clean up as we pick up a couple of the cars out there that are still off the tracks.”

The first priority is fixing the track so trains can run again. Then, crews will focus on clean-up, which involved removing the silica sand from the derailed cars before removing the cars themselves, Peters said.

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The rail cars were carrying silica sand Monday evening when they derailed near Poplar Drive, just north of Kelly Avenue. Poplar Drive is the only road access to homes north of the railroad tracks, so clean-up efforts have hindered traffic flow in that area, Rich Hart said. Some residents reported having to wait for several minutes as workers directed traffic around a large pile of gravel on Poplar Drive near the tracks.

There was no immediate emergency, but Hart would have preferred railway officials discussed their plans with local authorities right after the incident. Hart said Yorkville officials were looking into filing complaints with the National Transportation Safety Board or through the Kendall County State’s Attorney’s Office.

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“If (railway officials) would have coordinated with us, we probably would have asked them to construct a temporary crossing further down the tracks out of sand or something so emergency vehicles could get in there,” Hart said.

The company’s typical procedure includes coordinating with local officials, so Peters said he was surprised that Yorkville officials felt out of the loop. However, Hart and Yorkville Deputy Police Chief Larry Hilt said Yorkville officials had been talking with crews on the scene and a railway general manager since reaching out to them on Tuesday.

No one was injured during the derailment, and there was no immediate danger to area residents, authorities said. 

“They don’t haul hazardous waste through there,” Hart said. “90 percent of what they haul is silica sand.”

Peters said railrail officials were investigating what caused the derailment.

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