Derailment on the B&ML RR at Burnham Jct.

State inspectors were in Burnham Monday to investigate a train derailment. No one was injured when a car from a Belfast and Moosehead Railroad train went off the tracks Sunday afternoon.

It happened near the intersection of Main Street and Flat Johnson Street around 3:00 P.M.

Authorities say the car that derailed was the last of the cars on the train. The two passenger cars near the front were occupied, but the derailed car was empty.

After the car derailed, it slowly began leaking diesel fuel.

Story, with video, at:

http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=70598

Thanks for the link. I must have missed that I guess. Usually any train thing on the news for the state of Maine, is the Maine Eastern, with their train accidents about every month or every other month.

Joe

Joe Fox wrote:Usually any train thing on the news for the state of Maine, is the Maine Eastern, with their train accidents about every month or every other month.

By "train accidents," do you mean trespassers who get hit or whose ATVs get stuck on the tracks? I don't think Maine Eastern has had any derailments or wrecks or other mishaps that were of their own doing, which is probably what most people think of when they read the words "train accidents." Just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.

MEC407 wrote:

Joe Fox wrote:Usually any train thing on the news for the state of Maine, is the Maine Eastern, with their train accidents about every month or every other month.

By "train accidents," do you mean trespassers who get hit or whose ATVs get stuck on the tracks? I don't think Maine Eastern has had any derailments or wrecks or other mishaps that were of their own doing, which is probably what most people think of when they read the words "train accidents." Just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.

I agree with the Moderator, the phrasing can be interpreted in an unflattering way towards ME that I'm sure you didn't intend.

No, I did not intend to make it seem ME's fault. It is the fault of the idiots who think they can beat the train, and loose. Funny how if a train hits a car, it is speeding, when in fact they are going the speed limit of the railroad, or when a train hits an ATV, or person, the railroad is in the wrong, when in fact, it is the people who are tresspassing on railroad property. If somebody can figure out how railroads are always blames for everything under the sun, please let me know. Thanks,

Joe

It is a sorry symptom of our modern day society. We as people are never to blame for our own actions. It's ALWAYS somebody else's fault.

Meyblc wrote:

We as people are never to blame for our own actions. It's ALWAYS somebody else's fault.

And there are way too many lawyers making sure that mind set doesn't change,

Let's make sure we're discussing the BML derailment, and not critiquing our society at large.

-otto-

I think "perspective" is realizing that some economic hard times at the railroad and one unpaid few hundred dollar rent check are pretty poor reasons to rip out a historic yard, demolish hsitoric structures, cut off a large city's only rail access (and therefore, the possibility of any major non-tourism industry locating in town), force a railroad (or any other company) on hard times to close up shop, push a pontential significant tourist attraction out of a region/town that quite frankly is living and breathing on tourist dollars alone (I always found it unbelievably ironic given teh toruism-based economy, that the CIty never once appeared to me to be promoting the railroad as an element of said tourism-based economy), and then, to see that it was all just a campain to get the railroad to leave, and that the City has not even enacted all of the "better uses" that were being touted for years in a targeted campaign to get the railroad "out". Heck, Belfast doesn't even have a nice walkway along the waterfront for tourists to walk on!

Not to deny or minimize the truths that the railroad DID default on a payment, or that the railroad has had some real lean times... but when you add up the total impacts and costs, the loss of tourist trade, the loss of potential business opportunity, it doesn't make sense. And the fact that on top, the city hasn't done a damn thing with the property... was it just for spite? I mean, if the city needed tourist dollars, and had nothing better to do with the land and strcutures, why did they not do all they could to help that potential tourist draw, historic site, and potential economic lifeline should an industry ever again decide to locate in Belfast? Late payments or not, lean times or not, Belfast could have gained a lot more from the B&ML in the last coupel years, than from two vacant enginehouses and a field of gravel IMHO.

I'm sure the town of Unity isn't complaing, though