FERRYVILLE, Wis. – A freight train of mixed cargoes derailed along the Mississippi River south of the Black Hawk Bridge into Iowa at Lansing. Two of three locomotives left the rails. A dozen container cars crumpled up accordion-like, blocking the double-track mainline. Two cars dropped into the river. A Burlington Northern Santa Fe statement from the railroad’s Texas headquarters said neither of the cars in the river were carrying hazardous or toxic cargoes. Four crew members in the head-end locomotive appeared unhurt but were taken 20 miles to a Prairie du Chien hospital for examination. The accident occurred about 12:15 p.m. Jim Hackett, the Crawford County emergency management director, said diesel fuel from the locomotives went into the roadbed but was being removed and posed no environmental threat. A boat crew laid a boom around the wreckage to to catch any leakage that wasn’t immediately identified. The railroad said that the two cars in the river were carrying paint and had been been secured to the bank. Other derailed cars, still on shore, carried lithium-ion batteries and oxygen but didn’t enter the water and pose no risk.
Site detail
The double-track BNSF mainline links Minneapolis and Chicago. In a typical day 45 to 50 trains pass through Ferryville, a hamlet of 170 people. These trains, some as long as two miles. are assembled in yards in Galesburg, LaCrosse and Minneapolis, The route carries passenger trains only when Amtrak needs to reroute its Empire Builder from its trans-Wisconsin route between LaCrosse and Milwaukee. Until the derailment can be cleared up, BNSF trains have alternate possibilities through Wisconsin on Canadian Pacific and Canadian National trackage.
Riverside accident. The Chicago-bound freight earlier had passed through Fountain City, 70 miles upriver, with loads of imported goods from Asia.
Roadbed
Because the Ferryville tracks are astride the Mississippi, speculation turned immediately to the possibility of a flood-softened roadbed. BNSF crews in rail-mounted trucks make several daily checks of conditions. At nearby Lynxville and Prairie du Chien, flooding has ranged from moderate to major. In a 2016 derailment at Ferryville two locomotives and six cars derailed due to extensive flooding after heavy rains. An estimated 1,170 gallons of diesel poured into the river from a ruptured tank.
Highways
U.S. Highway 35, also known as the Great River Road, was barricaded so trucks could carry loads of stone unimpeded from a nearby quarry to build access to the derailment for recovery crews and their cranes and heavy-lift equipment. Only local traffic was permitted into Ferryville. Motorists were diverted up into the bluffs around Ferryville on backroads. Meanwhile, the rickety Black Hawk bridge connecting Wisconsin and Iowa north of Ferryville remained closed, as it had been for several days because of Mississippi River flooding. The Black Hawk is the only highway bridge across the river in a 60-mile stretch.