[A]mtrak locomotive number 102 was transported to Montpelier Junction Sunday, after being retrieved by heavy-duty cranes from the steep ravine where it came to rest after last Monday’s derailment in Northfield.
At 1:45 p.m. Sunday, a New England Central Railroad locomotive slowly pulled the wrecked locomotive, strapped firmly to a flatcar, from the spot in Northfield village to which it had been taken by road on Saturday. Crews from a New York state rigging company had spent about two hours lifting the Amtrak locomotive from that site and suspending it over the tracks while the NECR engineer backed in his flatcar.
According to Amtrak spokesman Craig Schulz, the locomotive will be sent on to Amtrak’s main shops in Beech Grove, Indiana, for repair, while the damaged cars, taken by rail earlier this week to Montpelier Junction, will be sent to Amtrak shops in Bear, Delaware.
The process of recovering the locomotive had its highlight late Saturday afternoon, when a 12-axle behemoth known as a self-propelled modular transporter carried the locomotive from the derailment site on Northfield’s Bull Run Road down Routes 12A and 12 to the center of Northfield village. There, the transporter and locomotive were parked awaiting Sunday’s transfer of the locomotive to the NECR flatcar.
The locomotive’s left side was badly bashed in, but no other major damage was obviously visible.
Sources at the Northfield village site told VTDigger that, while the locomotive could have been lifted back up the ravine’s slope to the tracks at the point of the derailment, doing so would have placed an optical fiber line along the tracks at considerable risk, and that course of action was abandoned.
The work of restoring the derailment site, where a large number of trees had been bulldozed out to build a makeshift access road, was expected to begin today. Late Friday, the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Ted Unkles told VTDigger that Williston’s Environmental Products and Services, a spill response contractor, had taken out 410 cubic yards of soil contaminated by diesel fuel – equivalent to about 29 dump truck loads – and deposited it at a well-protected holding site in the ravine. A New Hampshire firm will ultimately incorporate the soil into an asphalt paving aggregate.
The intervention of a large tree reportedly prevented the locomotive from sliding all the way into Bull Run, at the bottom of the ravine, and fouling the watercourse directly with leaked fuel. Exact assessment of the leakage’s extent has yet to be completed. Unkles said that up to 900 gallons may have been spilled, although, at least to a brief visual examination, the brook was clear of contaminants on Saturday.
Quite a show
Saturday’s procession through Northfield took on a festive atmosphere reminiscent of the town’s annual Labor Day parade, as some 100 residents gathered at the central common, Depot Square, to follow the last stage of the spectacle. The locomotive then proceeded to its night’s resting place alongside the NECR tracks just south of the old depot building, which now houses a bank.
The day had begun with four massive machines known as sidewinders — bulldozers with cranes mounted on one side and huge counterweights on the other — picking up the locomotive and suspending it as they moved eastward across Bull Run. Crews had already created a temporary riprap road from there up the milder slope to Bull Run Road. The sidewinders gingerly placed the locomotive on the frame of the 96-wheeled SPMT at a point near the road, completing their work for the time being.
At that point the transporter took over. The German-built vehicle, with eight wheels on every axle, drew its power from a 400-horsepower diesel engine, mounted in a large boxlike housing at the vehicle’s rear, which propelled the axles hydraulically. Contractor Central Jersey Trucking and Rigging’s Michael Sargenti, whom one of his colleagues described as “a 21st-century truck driver,” directed the 70-foot-long vehicle over its 2-hour, 2.5-mile journey to the village by means of a wireless remote-control console suspended by straps over his chest. Walking ahead of the transporter, he maneuvered the behemoth vehicle with a device that resembled nothing more than a small accordion.
Sargenti seemed to be enjoying himself as he superintended the unique procession, which included several Amtrak and Northfield police vehicles, an ambulance, and two phone-company employees who walked along with the vehicles and raised low-hanging phone wires on long pikes to give the transporter and locomotive adequate clearance.
In the village, the spectacle attracted a moving crowd of onlookers, who snapped photos busily as youngsters on bicycles and babies in strollers directed their gazes toward something they would very likely never see again: a locomotive and its 96-wheeled platform edging down an archetypal New England main street against a backdrop of near-peak autumn colors and a crystal-blue sky.
On Saturday evening, with the locomotive successfully put to bed near the old depot, an Amtrak police officer was overheard summarizing the day to a Northfield colleague:
“Quite a show!”
By one count, the derailment obliged Amtrak to hire at least eight contractors to handle environmental hazards, tree removal and road-building, in addition to the locomotive’s transport. The undertaking will likely cost the national passenger rail provider several million dollars. The company, which according to most observers suffers from a lack of rolling stock, is expected to return all the damaged equipment to service as soon as possible.
