Randy Marcus was attempting to allay concerns Thursday night, when he told a room full of concerned residents, community leaders and city officials that the train derailment near the Cobblestone apartment complex this past July was the product of a “one in 100,000 derail device incident.”
But those odds still didn’t sit well with many of the residents who gathered at the Mayfield Community Center for a meeting about the device, which has since been located farther south — closer to their neighborhood.
“What if we’re 2 in 100,000?” Alexa McNeil, a 20-year Mayfield resident, asked CSX Director of State Relations Marcus, who has represented the railroad company publicly since last year’s incident.
McNeil was particularly alarmed that Marcus didn’t know of existing technology — such as remote triggers — that allows for automatic notification to residents if a derail device is activated.
And she wasn’t alone.
“At this point, we are the first responders,” she said. “We’re going to be the ones to get our neighbors out. We’re going to be the ones to make the phone call, and it needs to be on you all, because it’s your device.”
Thursday’s meeting, which was facilitated by Del. Joshua Cole (D-Fredericksburg) and hosted by the Mayfield Civic Association and Fredericksburg Branch, NAACP, began with Marcus playing a series of YouTube clips in an attempt to demonstrate what, exactly, derail devices are and how they function.
The devices, which are often painted yellow and protrude up at an angle from the tracks, contact flanged train wheels and knock them off the tracks.
“It’s counterintuitive that we would have infrastructure that derails trains and derails trains intentionally,” Marcus said. “What derails devices are for is to protect unsecured cars from industry tracks or yards onto the main line, where there could be significant issues.”
The device actually worked properly last fall, explained Marcus, but its proximity to a sound wall proved problematic. After leaving the tracks, unsecured cars rolled onto their sides and barreled through the sound wall, ultimately leveling a pair of garages near the complex.
Following the derailment, CSX decided to move the derail device approximately ½ mile south, to a spot along the tracks just north of Route 3 (Blue and Gray Highway). The new location was chosen because of several factors, said Marcus, including distance from nearby communities and roadways.
“If it ever, like the incident that we had unsecured cars again, if they come off the rails, they’re going to stay on our property, it’s not going to affect anybody else,” he said.
Marcus also said that he was mistaken last August, when he appeared before City Council to provide updates and stated that the derail device had been located south of Blue and Gray Parkway.
“I didn’t get the accurate information,” said Marcus, “and that was my mistake, which created some false inference of where it was and what it was doing.”
Councilors Chuck Frye (Ward 4), Jon Gerlach (Ward 2), Jannan Holmes (at-large) and Will Mackintosh (at-large) attended Thursday’s meeting, which also addressed lingering concerns over tanker cars that have often been parked on the CSX tracks near Railway Avenue.
Asked about whether those cars, which often contain hazardous, combustible and flammable materials, would return, Marcus replied, “I don’t ever want to say never.”
Toward the end of the meeting — which ran an extra half-hour past the usual monthly gatherings the Mayfield Civic Association holds on the third Thursday of each month — residents asked Marcus if he’d pledge to return on at least an annual basis, and he agreed.
At times, though, it seemed as if Marcus and residents were engaged in separate, if parallel conversations: the former earnestly addressing technical details and the latter, exasperated group expressing basic human needs.
“I don’t want my friends to die,” Mayfield resident Marcel Kay said forcefully. “I don’t want my family to die.”
“Neither do we,” replied Marcus.
