UP continues cleanup of massive Inland Empire rail yard derailment

UP continues cleanup of massive Inland Empire rail yard derailment No injuries were reported in a massive rail yard pile up early Saturday that left dozens of mangled rail cars and mountains of feed corn strewn along the side of an Inland Empire switching yard.
   Union Pacific crews worked through the weekend to clean up the results of the crash, which damaged four sets of tracks and littered 38 cars inside the Union Pacific’s West Colton Classification Yard in the city of Colton.
   The 3 a.m. crash Saturday also involved rail cars carrying hazardous materials such as the poisonous plastics-component phenol, disinfectants and pharmaceuticals. Hazmat officials from the Colton Fire Department stayed at the site well into Saturday assessing the damage and monitoring the cleanup. Fire officials report that none of the hazardous cargo leaked or spilled, however a large spill of feed-corn left dunes of the food stock across the accident site.
   UP said it would take several days to determine the cause of the crash and it was still unclear to investigators which cars were in motion when the accident occurred. The yard is slightly downhill from a nearby facility in Bloomington and workers for the Omaha, Neb.-based rail firm often use gravity to move cars down through the Colton yard as trains are 'built' before heading out of the downstream yard.
   UP crash clean-up experts on the scene told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that the number of cars involved and the location inside a switching yard made the accident a rare occurrence.
   “If it had happened within work hours, it would have killed somebody,” railroad repairman Hector Meza told the newspaper.