A local woman who was driving near the Festus site where a train derailed the day before, drove past two “Road Closed” signs and dropped into a shallow hole at the railroad crossing on Old State Hwy. A just west of the Larry G. Crites Memorial Park.
“I don’t know how in the world she didn’t have damage to her car,” Festus Police Chief Tim Lewis said. “She must not have been going very fast.”
Lewis said he did not know the woman’s age or where she lived.
Late on the morning of Aug. 11, the woman threaded her car through several pieces of heavy equipment and a barricade at the site where a crew from Union Pacific Railroad was working to repair damage from a 10-car train derailment the previous day.
Lewis said the front wheels of the woman’s car dropped off the roadway into an area being repaired, and it became stuck.
“The UP guys had these big machines there that can pick up a train car full of rocks,” he said. “They easily picked her car up, just lifted it out and put it back up on the road. The car checked out fine, and she was able to drive it away.”
Lewis said the woman, who was older, declined to be identified, and Union Pacific officials declined to file a report.
“They said it was more trouble than it would be worth,” he said. “They said it was a ‘no-harm, no-foul’ kind of thing and they frankly didn’t want to mess with the paperwork.
“The lady, I think she was embarrassed, and she just wanted to go home.”
Lewis said the road and railway repairs in the derailment area are now complete, and Old State Hwy. A is now open.
“It took them five or six days, but it looks great,” he said. “It was amazing; they had a stream of tractor-trailers, each one with a section of pre-made track. They’d load a section onto this big machine that would take it down the tracks and put it in place. It was pretty cool.”