(Sandwich Academy Grant Township) The Maine rail line where three locomotives and six cars of a Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) freight train derailed last weekend was able to reopen on Monday, its owner confirmed .
By late Monday morning, repair and clean-up operations were completed, the CPKC said, two days after the incident that led to the hospitalization of three people.
The derailment was therefore concluded without disastrous consequences. However, the situation could have been much worse, since two of the cars that derailed were carrying hazardous materials.
The contents of those wagons, however, did not spill out or catch fire, even after the fires broke out in the locomotives and other wagons carrying timber, authorities said.
The CPKC was responsible for cleanup operations, with support from local authorities in Maine.
The accident occurred on the Canadian Pacific railway line which notably crosses Farnham and Lac-Mégantic, then goes to Saint-Jean, New Brunswick.
The track is the same one where the fatal Lac-Mégantic disaster unfolded about 90 kilometers further west in 2013. Canadian Pacific did not own the track at the time.
The derailment came a day after Canadian Pacific General Manager Keith Creel presented a platinum nail at a ceremony in Kansas City to celebrate the company’s purchase of Kansas City Southern.
The combined company creates the only railroad that stretches from Canada to the United States and Mexico. It is the first major rail merger on the continent in more than two decades, after a US regulator approved the US$31 billion deal last month.
The Federal Railroad Administration, which sent an inspector to the scene, suggested it would be several weeks before full details of the accident were revealed. Canadian Pacific has until the end of May to submit a report on the causes of the derailment.