{"id":35148,"date":"2023-03-20T23:19:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T05:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/no-known-cause-behind-fridays-narrow-gauge-derailment\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:23:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:23:05","slug":"no-known-cause-behind-fridays-narrow-gauge-derailment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/no-known-cause-behind-fridays-narrow-gauge-derailment\/","title":{"rendered":"No known cause behind Friday\u2019s narrow gauge derailment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Durango
Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad locomotive No. 493 is the first engine to be converted to run on oil. The railroad announced Wednesday it purchased two diesel engines.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad derailed near Junction Creek on Friday evening as it returned to Durango, delaying the 402 passengers aboard by an hour and 10 minutes. The cause of the incident remains unknown and under investigation.<\/p>\n

General Manager of D&SNG Jeff Johnson said the lead truck on the locomotive \u2013 the part of the car to which the axles and wheels are mounted \u2013 went over the rail, spreading the gauge of the tracks. Wheels from some of the rail cars followed the locomotive off the track and fell into an area known as the track ballast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe initial investigation is not conclusive,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt is extremely soft out there. There\u2019s nothing that was obviously in poor condition. So we\u2019re just having to take a closer look at it and maybe we\u2019ll come to a final conclusion of what may have caused it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said the railroad was able to quickly dispatch another train to the site to pickup the passengers and return them to the station.<\/p>\n

The train was moving an estimated 11 or 12 mph when the derailment occurred, Johnson said, likely limiting the distance the cars traveled off the tracks.<\/p>\n

D&SNG was able to repair the track within a few hours and had returned the train to the depot by 9:30 p.m. that night. The train has been traveling at 5 mph as it passes over that spot until the final investigation is concluded.<\/p>\n

Johnson said derailments are uncommon on the D&SNG.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re investigating maybe a bit of an anomaly out there due to the softness of the track and melting snow and the moisture,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to look into that as a possibility but we haven\u2019t entirely determined it just yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cascade Canyon Express jumped the tracks, delaying 402 passengers by about an hour<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[170,28,2399,3071],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-35148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-and-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-co","tag-headlines","tag-railway","tag-railway-crash"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82879,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35148\/revisions\/82879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35148"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=35148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}