As you may know I like trains and one of my favorite trains is Amtrak's Southwest Chief and earlier this week it suffered a derailment in Mendon, Missouri - which is not that far out of Kansas City, Missouri. It hit a dump truck at a crossing which is said to suffer some issues such as a lack of visibility of any oncoming trains, it's at an angle, and there are no gates to discourage cars from crossing the tracks. Unfortunately there were three four fatalities and of course in a situation like this a number of injuries.
The pictures I've seen of this accident the locomotive that hit the truck looks bad, and of course all the superliner cars behind were on the ground on the side. And it looks like the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad has some work to do to repair the tracks.
I've been following the Amtrak Alerts twitter since this derailment and seen that the Southwest Chief had been terminating out of Kansas City until the derailment scene is cleared. Though the twitter account is now showing trains are now departing Chicago.
This below video shows the scene cleared of that Amtrak consist. I see the railroad is already getting ready to get some work done on the tracks to put them back into service. [VIDEO]
Perhaps it won't be too long before the Southwest Chief will again makes stops in LaPlata, Ft. Madison, and Galesburg....
