DICKSON CITY, Pa. -- Four train cars were caught on camera as they fell off the tracks Tuesday in Lackawanna County.
Just after noon, those train cars carrying thousands of pounds of sand derailed in Dickson City, leaving behind a big mess that may take days to clean up.
Dickson City acting Police Chief William Bilinski witnessed the whole thing.
Bilinski was sitting in an SUV facing the tracks. He tells us he thought something was not normal with the flow of the train cars.
"I was watching the train cross the tracks. I saw one of the cars had a wheel that wasn't on the rail," he recalled. "Then the rest of the cars behind it as the train came down, started to build momentum rocking left to right until one of these cars got enough momentum and fell to the right and off the tracks."
The Delaware Lackawanna Railroad cleanup crews are facing a big mess -- huge mounds of sand, crumpled train cars that lost their wheels, and a twisted steel rail ripped from the railroad ties.
Officials from the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority tell Newswatch 16 this train was headed for Carbondale, carrying tons of sand to be dropped off there and then transferred to trucks for fracking in the region.
Members of the railroad authority say no one was hurt in this accident and there is no danger to the public.
Investigators have not said what led to the wreck.
