Derailment - Winchester and Potomac Railroad Bridge

At 0230 21 Dec 2019, an eastbound CSX consist derailed and dumped two empty grain cars into the water. The bridge is damaged.

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/fr ... story.html>

Note, this is not the bridge MARC and Amtrak run over. That said, that will require any freight headed around Fort Collins from Maryland to be routed to Martinsburg first to get to another line. Want to bet there's going to be congestion delays on the MARC Brunswick line and Amtrak's Capitol Limited!

Apparently they put the empties on the head end.

ohioriverrailway wrote: ↑Sat Dec 21, 2019 7:35 pm Apparently they put the empties on the head end.

Empties were on the rear end to....the train was grain empties.

Interesting bridge. It forks in the middle.
But the WRC helicopter imagery shows no tracks on the RH fork,
The Google imagery does show trackage but it's clearly abandoned.

The track curving to the right, used to be the main line. I believe it was removed when the current main line bridge was built.

It was removed recently, as evidenced by it still being in the Google imagery.....

dgvrengineer wrote: ↑Sun Dec 22, 2019 7:26 pm The track curving to the right, used to be the main line. I believe it was removed when the current main line bridge was built.

The missing track to the right was a industrial spur that served industries in 'downtown' Harpers Ferry back in the day. The track to the left follows the Shenandoah River towards Winchester.

If you look at the area around Harper's Ferry on Wikimapia, you'll see a northern and southern track. Both are CSX lines, but MARC and Amtrak run on the northern line. They split on the east side of the river.

Tracks are back open but the bridge also carries a national trail, and that is closed until repairs are made by CSX.