By Scott Lindsey

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — More than a week after a Norfolk Southern train derailed in Ohio, sparking a fire and evacuations in the small town of East Palestine, the railroad is trying to get its house back in order. 

Immediately after the derailment on February 3, NS began detouring freight traffic to other rail lines. NS’ former Pennsylvania Railroad main line through East Palestine is a very busy segment of its Midwest-Northeast route. A typical day on this double-track line between Pittsburgh and Cleveland can easily see 30-40 train movements, plus Amtrak’s Capital Limited. Thus, NS used a variety of routes to detour traffic as best possible around the derailment. 

The easiest option was using the portion of the Cleveland line east of Alliance via Bayard and Yellow Creek, Ohio, which connects back with the Fort Wayne Line in Rochester, Pa., just west of Conway Yard. Several intermodal and manifest trains were detoured daily utilizing this route. However, intermodal consists over this route were restricted to trailers and single-stacked containers due to clearance restrictions. NS also rerouted train west of Rochester to Cleveland via Youngstown and Ashtabula, Ohio. Another intermodal detour route was the former N&W between Bellevue, Ohio, and Hagerstown, Md., via Roanoke, Virginia. An advantage of this route was sufficient clearances for double-stack traffic. 

Further east, the New Jersey Division of the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railway was used for one pair of intermodal detours, linking the NS terminal in Croxton, NJ, with the NS at Binghamton, NY. These were Train 28X (Chicago-Croxton) and Train 29G (Croxton-Chicago). NS routed them west of Binghamton via Buffalo to the Chicago Line connection west of Cleveland at Vermillion, Ohio. Monday evening’s Train 29G detoured over the CSX main line from Croxton via upstate New York and then back to NS rails at Cleveland.