CP Rail launches major clean-up effort after derailment in Maine

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Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway crews face a hefty cleanup effort after a freight train derailed in rural Maine yesterday, setting several cars ablaze.

CPKC says the train hit a washout on the track in a wooded area near Moosehead Lake, some 220 kilometres southeast of Quebec City.

The railroad operator says three crew members were taken to a local hospital for non-life-threatening injuries Saturday and released the same day.

CPKC spokeswoman C. Doniele Carlson says locomotives and four derailed lumber cars went up in flames, with crews now containing spilled diesel fuel.

She says cars carrying drums of ethanol and another hazardous material also went off the rails but did not catch fire, with state officials adding there is no threat to public safety.

The rail line is the same one where the fatal Lac-Mégantic disaster unfolded about 90 kilometres further west as the crow flies in 2013.

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