Two Norfolk Southern trains derail in Alabama hours apart, reviving rail-safety questions

Two Norfolk Southern freight trains derailed in central Alabama within hours of each other on Thursday, prompting a precautionary evacuation near Birmingham, shutting down a stretch of Interstate 59 and reopening scrutiny of a railroad still working to repair its reputation after the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio disaster.

The first derailment struck shortly before 10 a.m. in Maplesville, a small Chilton County town about 50 miles south of Birmingham, when a Norfolk Southern train hauling garbage came off the tracks near Highway 22 and Railroad Street. Local officials said as many as 40 to 50 rail cars left the rails, with some stacked atop one another, though no injuries were reported and authorities said there was no danger to the public despite homes standing nearby.

About five hours later, a second and more disruptive derailment occurred roughly 45 miles northeast, in Springville in St. Clair County. A Norfolk Southern train struck a tractor-trailer at a grade crossing near Walker Drive and Industrial Drive shortly after 2 p.m., derailing 34 rail cars and two locomotives. The impact briefly closed Interstate 59 and Alabama 11 and prompted a half-mile precautionary evacuation while crews confirmed what the cars were carrying.

The numbers

Norfolk Southern said no hazardous materials were released in either incident and no waterways were affected. In Springville, the driver of the tractor-trailer was evaluated at the scene but did not require hospitalization, and the railroad said its own crew was uninjured. The evacuation radius there was lifted within hours once officials verified the cargo posed no risk, though cleanup crews told local media the work of clearing 36 pieces of rolling equipment from the tracks would likely take 12 to 15 hours to complete. Industrial Drive and Mountain View Road remained closed into Thursday evening, and St. Clair County school buses were rerouted so that students were dropped at their schools rather than at home. In Maplesville, two of the town's three main access routes were temporarily blocked before crews reopened the main intersections by Thursday afternoon.

A railroad under watch

Neither Thursday derailment approached the scale of the catastrophe that reshaped public perception of Norfolk Southern: the February 2023 wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, in which a Norfolk Southern train carrying vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals derailed and was partially burned off in a controlled release, forcing a prolonged evacuation and years of litigation. That accident led the National Transportation Safety Board to take the unusual step of opening a special investigation into the railroad's organizational safety culture, citing a string of serious accidents dating back to 2021.

The company's safety record has continued to draw federal attention since. Just four months ago, in June, a Norfolk Southern train derailed near Wartburg, Tennessee, rupturing tank cars that released roughly 107,000 gallons of flammable alcohols and triggered fires that burned for three days. The NTSB's investigation into that derailment remains open, with the agency still working to determine a probable cause. Thursday's back-to-back incidents, while far less severe, are likely to renew questions from safety advocates about whether the railroad's inspection and maintenance practices have improved enough since East Palestine, even though neither Alabama accident has, so far, drawn a federal investigation of its own.

The Springville wreck also fits a pattern that has worried rail-safety regulators for years. Grade-crossing collisions, in which a vehicle and a train occupy the same crossing at the same time, remain one of the most persistent sources of serious rail accidents nationally. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told Congress in testimony on grade-crossing dangers that 272 people were killed at crossings in a single recent year and that the collision rate per million train miles had risen by roughly a third over the preceding decade, even as railroads have installed more active warning devices nationwide. Thursday's Springville collision, officials said, occurred at a crossing already equipped with warning signals.

Who was affected

The disruption in St. Clair County fell hardest on commuters and families along the Interstate 59 corridor northeast of Birmingham, a fast-growing bedroom community for the metro area. Drivers faced detours during the Thursday evening commute, and parents had to adjust after the school system rerouted buses. In Maplesville, a town of about 640 people built around the rail line that bisects it, the derailment blocked two of only three roads leading in or out, a reminder of how dependent small rural communities remain on a handful of crossings and the railroads that bisect them.

Springville Mayor Austin Phillips credited emergency crews for containing the disruption quickly. "They did an outstanding job and we want to let them know how much we appreciate their efforts," Phillips said, according to local reporting. Springville Fire Chief Richard Harvey said the precautionary evacuation zone was set up, in his words, "out of an abundance of caution until we could confirm exactly what the cargo was."

"We don't have any hazmat leaks. We don't have any waterways affected," Norfolk Southern assistant vice president Ryan Clark told reporters at the Springville scene.

What happens next

Norfolk Southern crews were still working through the night Thursday to clear both sites and restore normal rail traffic through central Alabama. Neither county has indicated that state or federal investigators plan to take over the inquiries, which for now remain with local fire and police officials and the railroad's own incident-response teams; accidents without injuries or hazardous-material releases typically do not trigger an NTSB investigation, though the agency can request data from the railroad after the fact. St. Clair County officials said the rail line through Springville should reopen once the derailed cars and locomotives are removed, a process other recent Norfolk Southern derailments nationally have taken anywhere from several hours to several days to complete. For residents along both routes, the more lasting question is whether two derailments in one state on one day will add fresh urgency to a rail-safety debate that has simmered, largely unresolved in Congress, since East Palestine.