A train derailment in downtown Mullins this past Monday morning blocked off several streets, including Main Street.
The accident blocked four downtown streets – Main, Mullins, Park and Gapway – for about three hours. By about noon, railroad officials had cleared out some of the train’s cars to allow traffic to go through.
Cleaning up the wreckage, however, could take up to two weeks, officials said, adding the hope was to have the tracks ready for trains to go through by Wednesday.
Mullins City Administrator Pete Rogers said 11 train cars from the Carolina Southern Railroad Company derailed.
The Carolina Southern Railroad train carrying coal was en route to Santee Cooper when it jumped the tracks around 9 a.m. The train’s cars left the tracks, spilling large mounds of coal onto the ground nearby. No one was injured in the accident.
Jean English is the secretary and treasurer of Taylor, Harris and Webster Insurance Agency, which is located across the street from the tracks.
She said she heard the train derail shortly arriving at work.
“All of a sudden it sounded like all Hades had broken loose out there,” she said.
A few minutes later she walked outside and was shocked at what she saw.
“I thought, ‘For crying out loud, what’s wrong with that dumb train?”
Officials with Carolina Southern Railroad aren’t sure what caused the derailment, but say they’ve seen worse situations.
“We’ve been through these things before,” Jason Pippin, the company’s vice president, said. “These types of things look terrible. They’re not quite as bad as they look.”
“We hate it, we wish it wouldn’t happen but at some point you’re going to have a derailment,” he said.
Pippin said each car on the train carries about 100 tons of coal. He expects the company will be able to salvage about 90 percent of the coal on the eleven cars involved in the accident.
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