Six BNSF rail cars carrying propane and fuel derail in Montana town, forcing school evacuation

Six freight cars derailed inside a BNSF Railway yard in Shelby, Montana, early Monday morning, tipping three tank cars onto their sides and prompting authorities to close nearby roads and move students out of the town's schools as a precaution. No one was hurt, and officials said none of the derailed cars — which were carrying propane, diesel and gasoline — leaked.

The derailment happened at 6:39 a.m. local time inside a rail yard just north of Roosevelt Highway, near the Ben Taylor Inc. grain facility on the edge of town, according to emergency officials in Toole County. Dispatchers were notified about 40 minutes later, triggering a response from the sheriff's office, the Shelby Fire Department, state transportation crews and U.S. Border Patrol agents stationed near the nearby Canadian border town.

What happened

"About six cars derailed. Three of them flipped on their side. We called everybody out," Toole County Undersheriff Tyler Foss said, describing the scene inside the rail yard. Authorities shut down businesses within a half-mile radius of the site and closed Roosevelt Highway while crews assessed the derailed cars for leaks.

Toole County Emergency Services Coordinator Kelsey Buckley told residents there was "no immediate danger" but urged people to stay away from the area while the situation was "being handled." BNSF said its crews secured the site and cleared the derailed cars from the main line by midday, and that the cause of the derailment remains under investigation.

"About six cars derailed. Three of them flipped on their side. We called everybody out." — Toole County Undersheriff Tyler Foss

By the numbers

• 6 rail cars derailed inside the Shelby yard; 3 overturned onto their sides
• 1 tank car carrying propane came off the rails but did not flip and did not leak
• 1 car held a full load of diesel; 2 others carried gasoline and diesel but were described as nearly empty
• Roughly 5 hours passed between the 6:39 a.m. derailment and the lifting of road closures around 11:30 a.m.
• 99.999% of BNSF's hazardous-materials shipments nationwide arrive without an unplanned release, according to the railroad's own published safety record

How we got here

Shelby, a town of roughly 3,100 people about 30 miles from the Canadian border, sits on BNSF's Hi-Line Subdivision, the former Great Northern Railway main line that still carries a heavy mix of grain, fuel and other freight across northern Montana. Rail yards like the one where Monday's derailment occurred are used to sort and stage cars, and low-speed derailments inside yards are more common — and typically far less destructive — than derailments on main track at higher speeds.

Even so, any derailment involving tank cars draws scrutiny in an era shaped by the February 2023 Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, where dozens of cars came off the tracks and several ruptured, releasing hazardous chemicals and forcing a mass evacuation. That accident, and the National Transportation Safety Board's lengthy investigation into it, pushed rail safety and hazmat transparency to the top of the national conversation and led railroads, including BNSF, to face new pressure over how they handle and disclose hazardous cargo moving through small communities.

Monday's derailment was not an isolated event on this stretch of track. A year earlier, in September 2025, seven empty BNSF railcars derailed near Summit, Montana, on the same Hi-Line Subdivision, blocking the main line and forcing Amtrak to cancel its Empire Builder passenger service between Portland, Oregon, and Chicago for a day while crews cleared the wreckage. No one was hurt in that incident either, but the back-to-back disruptions have renewed informal talk in Toole County about the volume of freight — and how much of it is flammable — that rolls through Shelby's yard every day on its way across the Hi-Line toward the Pacific Northwest.

Who is affected

The most immediate disruption fell on Shelby Public Schools, which was notified of the derailment at 7:47 a.m. and moved students out of classrooms and up to the town's airport, where parents picked up their children. Classes and after-school activities were canceled for the day district-wide, though normal operations resumed Tuesday morning. Businesses within the half-mile precautionary zone around the rail yard were also temporarily closed, and drivers on Roosevelt Highway had to find alternate routes for several hours.

Superintendent Elliott Crump said the district acted out of caution once it learned the derailed cars were believed to include propane. "The cars fell over, and so they're on their side," Crump said, adding of the evacuation: "We moved the students up to the airport and had parents come and check them out. And school is canceled for the day."

Reaction and what happens next

Local officials emphasized that the quick response, not luck alone, kept the incident from becoming more serious. Foss said his office "called everybody out" as soon as dispatch flagged the potential hazmat cargo, a decision that mobilized fire, school and highway officials within roughly half an hour of the derailment being reported.

BNSF has not released a cause for the derailment and said its investigation is continuing, a process that typically includes inspecting the track bed, the wheel and axle components of the derailed cars, and the yard's operating and inspection records. Federal regulators do not automatically dispatch investigators to every rail-yard derailment, particularly one without an injury or hazardous-material release, meaning the inquiry will likely be led by BNSF's own safety department in the near term rather than the National Transportation Safety Board, which typically opens formal probes into derailments that cause deaths, major environmental damage or large-scale evacuations.

For now, Shelby's rail yard and the roads around it have reopened, the main line has been cleared, and students were back in class Tuesday morning. For residents of a town built around the railroad, Monday's scare was also a reminder of how routinely tank cars carrying propane, diesel and gasoline pass within a few hundred feet of homes, businesses and two public schools on their way across the Hi-Line to destinations elsewhere in the country.