What railroad runs through Mendon Mo?

A photo from the site of derailment (Photo credit: Twitter/cloudmarooned)

Several people were hurt after an Amtrak train derailed in Missouri near Mendon

Mendon is about a hundred miles northeast of Kansas City

According to the 2020 census it has a population of 163 people

Published: June 28, 2022 2:16:45 AM IST Mendon, MI, USA

Several people were hurt after an Amtrak train derailed in Missouri, according to the passenger rail operator.

As per the company, the train collided with a dump truck at a public crossing in the city of Mendon at around 1:42 p.m. CT.

Mendon is about a hundred miles northeast of Kansas City. The train was travelling from Los Angeles to Chicago.

Also read: How Amtrak train derailed in Mendon, Missouri, eyewitness accounts and more

According to the 2020 census, it is a city in western Chariton County, Missouri, with a population of 163.

History of the town 

Christopher Shupe designed Mendon in 1871.

The arrival of the Chicago, Santa Fe, and California Railroad in the 1880s presented the inhabitants of Mendon with a significant decision. Over a mile away, the train line was supposed to pass. When the railroad tracks were completed in 1887 and 1888, they created a new Mendon at the present position, and the former location was mostly deserted.

Also read: Amtrak crash: History of train accidents from vehicle collisions

By 1899, the town had grown to include over twenty establishments, a school, a bank, and two hotels. The Mendon Citizen was the first newspaper to be produced in 1886. In the late 1890s, the estimated population was 350 people.

The town presently

Even though the Santa Fe railroad still runs through on a regular basis, little of Mendon's economic community survives.

Also read: Amtrak train derails a day after fatal crash: All you need to know

Northwestern High School educates the residents of the town and the adjacent rural area. The athletic and academic teams at the school compete in Missouri Class 1, the smallest of all categories.

Mendon's closeness to the Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge has proven to be a source of money for the village, with companies catering to the region's waterfowl hunters.

The Amtrak train derailment that killed four people and injured approximately 150 happened at a public crossing with no active warning signals — something state officials were aware of and planning to fix.

The crossing at County Road 113 and Porche Prairie Road in Mendon, Missouri — about 100 miles outside of Kansas City — was identified for improvement in the Missouri Department of Transportation’s State Freight & Rail Plan report published in February of this year.

The crossing is on a gravel road level with the tracks and only has a crossbuck sign used to indicate a railway crossing. The Mendon crossing is one of 50% of at-grade public crossings in Missouri that do not have active lights or gates. In a press briefing Tuesday afternoon, National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said Missouri has about 3,500 "passive crossings" like the one in Mendon.

Homendy said the NTSB has recommended lights and bells at such crossings since the 1990's.

"It's been 24 years and that recommendation is still as important today as it was in 1998 lives could be saved.

Eric Brown, a lieutenant with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, says most rural crossings are uncontrolled.

“It's an uncontrolled crossbuck intersection on a gravel road. So no lights, no electronic control devices, things such as that,” Brown said. “A lot of your rural intersections are that way.”

About 70% of public, at-grade crossings are located in rural parts of Missouri.

The train, en route from Los Angeles to Chicago via Kansas City, struck a dump truck loaded with rock. The impact derailed several cars, killing the truck driver and three train passengers.

The upgrades are projected to cost $400,000 and will likely include lights, gates and roadway improvements.

A portion of a graph from MoDOT's State Freight & Rail Plan report detailing the costs for the Mendon crossing upgrades.

MoDOT generates the rail plan as part of a requirement to receive federal funds provided for the state’s rail networks.

The state generates about $1.5 million each year from a 25 cent state motor vehicle licensing fee and $6 million in Federal Railroad Administration funds. The agencies allocate those funds for work with private railroads on improving crossings.

The crossing project in Mendon will require $325,000 in federal funds and $75,000 from the state’s grade crossing safety account.

A contractor with BNSF and the Chariton County, where Mendon is located, will conduct the work in conjunction with MoDOT.

“The next step for this location is to work with these parties to develop an agreed upon solution and schedule,” said Linda Horn, communications director for MoDOT. “ Then, the railroad company will hire a contractor to complete the work and MoDOT will administer the federal reimbursement.”

MENDON, Mo. (AP) — The chief elected official in the Missouri county where an Amtrak train slammed into a dump truck said Tuesday that residents and county leaders have been pushing for a safety upgrade at the railroad crossing for nearly three years. Meanwhile, the toll from the accident rose to four deaths and 150 injuries.

A day after the deadly crash on Monday, the Missouri State Highway Patrol said people were taken to 10 hospitals with injuries ranging from minor to serious. By Tuesday afternoon, at least 15 people remained hospitalized. The dead — three passengers and the truck driver — have not been identified.

Amtrak’s Southwest Chief was traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago when it struck the rear of the truck. Two locomotives and eight cars derailed. Amtrak officials said about 275 passengers and 12 crew members were aboard.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer L. Homendy said at a news conference that the truck was owned by MS Contracting of Brookfield, Missouri, and was transporting material to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project nearby.

Homendy said investigators will download recorder information to determine the speed of the train, when the horn was blown and if the emergency brake was deployed. She said some of that information could be released as early as Wednesday. The speed limit at the crossing is 90 mph (145 kph).

The crossing in a rural area near Mendon in western Missouri has no lights or other signals to warn of an approaching train.

Chariton County Presiding Commissioner Evan Emmerich said in an email to The Associated Press that resident Mike Spencer first brought his concerns about the crossing to a Dec. 2, 2019, commission meeting. He was told to contact the Missouri Department of Transportation’s Railroad Safety division. A week later, commissioners spoke with officials from the state agency and were told “it is on their plans to repair,” Emmerich said.

After that, Emmerich cited other efforts by the commission. They included a March 2021 meeting with a state Railroad Safety division engineer at the crossing site; an email sent to the Railroad Safety division on May 23 to address concerns about visibility at the crossing; and a May 31 call to BNSF Railway, which owns the track, “to express our concerns with the visibility issue” at the crossing.

In January, the Missouri Department of Transportation submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration its “State Freight & Rail Plan” plan. It included a proposal to install lights and gates, along with roadway improvements. The project was estimated at $400,000. Typically, the federal government would pay 80% and the county 20%.

MoDOT spokeswoman Linda Horn said that with limited funds available, “it takes a while to get these prioritized.” She said the project has received approval in a four-year plan that runs through fiscal year 2026.

BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent declined comment on “specific conversations” about upgrades to the crossing, citing the NTSB investigation, “however, I can tell you that BNSF has a proactive vegetation management program across our network,” she said.

Spencer told The Associated Press that he is among several people who have complained that the overgrowth of brush and the steep incline from the road to the tracks makes it hard to see oncoming trains from either direction. Spencer, who grows corn and soybeans on land surrounding the intersection, said the crossing is especially dangerous for those driving heavy, slow farm equipment.

Spencer is on the board of a local levee district. He said the dump truck driver was hauling rock for a levee on a local creek, a project that had been ongoing for a couple of days.

Earlier this month, Spencer posted a video on Facebook of the crossing that shows the steep gravel incline leading up to it.

“We have to cross this with farm equipment to get to several of our fields,” Spencer wrote with the posting. “We have been on the RR for several years about fixing the approach by building the road up, putting in signals, signal lights or just cutting the brush back.”

Homendy said “passive” crossings like the one near Mendon make up about half of all crossings in the U.S. She said there are 130,000 passive crossings nationwide and 3,500 in Missouri.

The NTSB has for years recommended actions such as closing passive crossings or adding gates, bells and other upgrades at passive crossings, Homendy said. She said the agency also has recommended technology to alert drivers to the presence of an oncoming train at crossings such as the one at Mendon that are on an incline.

“Lives could be saved,” she said.

Kyle Bullard, a 21-year-old student at Lindenwood University in suburban St. Louis, was traveling from a friend’s home in Kansas City, Missouri, to Kalamazoo, Michigan, for a wedding. He fell 10 feet onto his back when his cab tipped over.

Bullard and his friend escaped and returned to help others out of the train, but he said he’s still bothered by the image of a woman buried in rubble. He said someone was holding her hand, and he realized he couldn’t do anything to help her.

“We were grateful because we made it out alive, but we’re also sad because some people didn’t. We’re sorry for those families,” Bullard said. “Yeah, I survived the train crash and I helped people, but it’s like, I did also see someone die. So it’s just like, it is what it is. And I’m gonna have to move on from it. But it’s just gonna be always in the back of my head.”

The incident in Missouri was among three fatal Amtrak accidents since Sunday.

Three people in a car were killed Sunday afternoon when an Amtrak commuter train smashed into it in Northern California, authorities said. Also, on Monday in Detroit, two people died when their vehicle collided with an Amtrak train. Police Chief James White said officers were dispersing drag racers and one vehicle sped away and tried to beat the train.

People have been injured or killed in at least six other accidents involving Amtrak trains since 2015. Last year, three people died and others were injured when an Amtrak derailed in north-central Montana as it traveled from Chicago to Seattle.

Amtrak is a federally supported company that operates more than 300 passenger trains daily in nearly every contiguous U.S. state and parts of Canada. The Southwest Chief takes about two days to travel from Los Angeles to Chicago, picking up passengers at stops in between.

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Ballentine reported from Columbia, Missouri. Associated Press reporters Margaret Stafford in Kansas City, Missouri, and Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri, contributed to this report.