Train cars derail in Yorkville; crews work to clean up site
By Valerie Burd For The Beacon-News January 24, 2012 12:04PM
Workers use heavy equipment to upright rail cars that derailed and tipped over on the Illinois Rail Net line just west of Poplar Drive in the River's Edge subdivision in Yorkville on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. | Steven Buyansky~Sun-Times Media
Updated: February 26, 2012 8:09AM
YORKVILLE — For the second time in the past year-and-a-half, train cars have derailed on the Illinois Railway tracks on the west side of Yorkville. No one was injured.
Trucks, bulldozers and other heavy equipment were in operation for much of Tuesday at the scene of the derailment just west of Poplar Drive in the River’s Edge Subdivision.
A half-dozen freight cars filled with silica sand tipped over and another five came off the tracks late Monday evening, officials said. The train was bound from the Eola yard in Aurora to Ottawa.
Deputy Police Chief Larry Hilt said he spoke with a representative of Maggio Truck Center, the company hired to clear up the site, who said the tipped-over cars would be put upright Tuesday, and the tracks would be repaired Wednesday.
River’s Edge residents said it was the unusually loud squealing sound of freight car wheels that alerted them Monday night to the derailment.
“It was like a squeal, and then you could hear banging,” said Debbie Granat, who lives on the north side of the tracks near the Fox River. “It happened about 6 p.m. The neighborhood boys were pretty sure it was not something good.”
Granat was one of several residents at the site Tuesday, watching as large bulldozers and cranes worked to remove the cars which were blocking the single set of tracks that makes up the line. Granat works at the Hoover Forest Preserve, which borders the River’s Edge subdivision. She said the train had just cleared a trestle that crosses a creek dividing the two properties when the cars began to derail.
“The one car was just off the trestle; another car is on its side just west of Poplar Drive. ... They had Poplar Drive all closed off this morning while they unloaded all their equipment, and we were blocked in,” she said.
An employee of Illinois Railway said Tuesday that an investigation is under way to determine what caused the derailment, but declined any further comment.
Alex Shaughnessy, another River’s Edge resident who lives north of the tracks, also heard a strange, loud squeaking noise and then a lot of rumbling that “went on for a while.”
Mayor Gary Golinski, who lives in River’s Edge south of the tracks, said Illinois Railway had not notified the city of the derailment; city officials learned of the accident from residents and the press who called City Hall Tuesday morning.
He added that the railroad is not under the control of city government, and said he was concerned about the safety of residents and will be urging Illinois Railway to take whatever steps are necessary to make the tracks running through Yorkville safe.
A similar derailment occurred in September 2010 near Hydraulic Street on Yorkville’s west side. Three freight cars were involved in that incident.
Workers from Illinois Railway, formerly known as Illinois Railnet, had spent the last two weeks demolishing the cars damaged in the previous derailment at the downtown site, where they had been stored on a side rail for the past year and a half.
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