FAYETTE COUNTY, Ga. — Railroad tracks running through a Fayette County town are back open, less than 24 hours after a train derailment, but the road is still closed.
Channel 2′s Steve Gehlbach was at the railroad crossing in Tyrone, Ga. where crewers were working to clean up the mess left behind.
Cars were still sitting at the crossing where the derailment happened when Gehalbach got there.
At the derailment spot, it looked like something happened after the crossing to send the last six cars on the train careening off.
Railroad crews worked overnight and into the morning to repair the tracks, where four train cars are still flipped over.
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Video from a dashboard camera posted to a local Facebook group showed the moment the freight cars and a tanker derailed after the Tyrone Road crossing.
“I think probably the tracks had got messed up,” Anthony Allen told Channel 2 Action News. Right now, he’s got a train car behind his barber shop, just feet away from becoming a tragedy.
He said “it was fearful, it was scary,” but no one in the area and no one from the train’s crew was hurt Tuesday night.
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“Just amazing that nothing major happened,” driver Suzette Eleam said.
But drivers who use the busy crossing now have to find another connection.
“Well, I’ll have to go around through Tyrone to get to Peachtree City when I could usually just cut through here,” Eleam said.
Others living near the tracks said they were just grateful nothing harmful came off.
“I’m very thankful that what they were carrying here seems to be inert or empty, and I’m very thankful no one was injured,” neighbor Ted Henry said.
For Allen, it was luck.
“I think if the tree and trench hadn’t have been there, it would have probably come through the shop,” he said.
Channel 2 Action News reached out to CSX about the derailment. They said they’re expecting two or three days will be needed to finish clean up and reopen the road. The railroad is also investigating what caused the incident.
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