Train Derailment Expected to Affect Commuters Today

Passengers expecting to board a train at Union Station to Baltimore instead were scrambling to get on a bus to take them to Baltimore's Penn Station. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

Three empty CSX Corp. coal cars derailed in the Bowie area last night, slowing rail traffic through the Baltimore-Washington corridor and creating potential havoc for rail commuters this morning, authorities said.

No one was injured when the cars left the tracks near the 11900 block of Lanham Severn Road about 7:20 p.m., said Mark Brady, a Prince George's County fire department spokesman.

The derailed cars pulled down power lines for hundreds of yards, cutting or reducing electricity to five Amtrak trains between Washington and Baltimore, authorities said. The hundreds of passengers on four of those trains, all southbound from the Northeast, waited last night to board buses to the District. A fifth car was stranded at the New Carrollton station for more than an hour before a diesel train was sent to tow it back to the District.

Traffic on MARC's Penn Line between Baltimore and Washington was also shut down.

It wasn't clear last night just how inconvenienced rail commuters would be today.

"There will likely be an impact on tomorrow's trains, but I do not know what to expect," Amtrak spokeswoman Tracy Connell said. She had said earlier that if repairs were not made quickly, disruptions probably would spread along the Northeast corridor.

Last night, a spokeswoman for the MARC commuter train line said that there would be no service on the Penn Line until at least noon. MARC tickets from New Carrollton and Greenbelt will be honored by Metro.

Connell said that hundreds of people were stranded at the District's Union Station. Buses transported many of them to Baltimore, where they were to resume traveling.

Brady said that there was no other substantial damage to the residential neighborhood abutting the tracks. "We're just extremely fortunate there [were no hazardous materials] on board and no fire" and that no one was injured, he said.

It was not immediately clear whether the derailment of the three cars in the 114-car train was related to a storm yesterday that had left standing water in the track bed and nearby woods.

Officials were trying to determine the cause, he said.

Early today, James Harris was just trying to get out of Union Station.

Harris, 27, had arrived an hour early for a 10 p.m. train to Wilmington, Del., his hometown. But Amtrak officials said the derailment would delay the trip until at least 3:15 a.m. So about midnight, he joined about 50 people scrambling to board a bus to Baltimore's Penn Station.

"All these people," Harris said as he worked his way through the crowd. "I'm trying to slide on this bus for real. I'm trying to get onto whatever they say to."

Harris made it. Another 50 people had to wait for the next bus.