Amtrak train hits truck stalled on tracks in N.C.
PLEASANT HILL, N.C. -- An Amtrak train struck a flatbed truck and split it in two near the North Carolina-Virginia border, officials say. There were no injuries.
The northbound Carolinian, whose route is between Charlotte, N.C. and New York, hit the truck just before 1 p.m., CBS News affiliate WRAL reported. The train was crossing from Northampton County into Greensville County, Va., about a tenth of a mile into Virginia at a crossing that serves a Georgia-Pacific plant.
Donnie Driver, whose Roanoke Rapids company owns the flatbed truck, said the driver had just dropped a load of plywood at the Georgia Pacific plant and didn't know a train was approaching. The driver told him the crossing arms weren't down, and no signal lights were flashing.
The driver stopped at a highway running parallel to the rail line to allow a car to pass. That's when the train slammed into the flatbed, splitting it in two, before he could turn on to the highway.
Passengers were told that the truck had stalled on the tracks before the collision, she said.
Wilma Conway of Cary, one of the 267 passengers on the train, said she heard a bang, and the train quickly came to a stop.
"We weren't going very fast," Conway said in a telephone interview. "Right along side of us is 'Welcome to Virginia,' so the train is straddling Virginia and North Carolina."