185 on Excursion Injured as Train Derails in Remote Wildlife Refuge

A Norfolk & Western excursion train carrying about 1,000 company employees and their families on an outing derailed Sunday and at least 185 people were injured, seven of them seriously, authorities said.

“All of a sudden, she just started rolling,” passenger H. L. Lowe said.

Fourteen of the train’s 23 cars left the track in a remote area of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. Helicopters were used to move many of the injured, authorities said.

“It’s eight miles down a railroad track, and no roads to the site,” Chesapeake Police Sgt. William Harrison said.

Those seriously hurt were taken to Norfolk General Hospital, where they were being treated for head and chest injuries, Debbie Myers of the hospital said.

“Many are critically injured,” she said. She added that five passengers were brought in by helicopter and two arrived by ambulance.

“Because of the remoteness of the location, they are using helicopters to get a lot of people out of there,” Myers said.

Four other hospitals reported treating some of the passengers for minor injuries.

The train, pulled by the historic steam engine No. 611, was used for excursions operated by the railroad on weekends, said Robert C. Fort, spokesman for Norfolk Southern Corp., the Norfolk-based parent company of Norfolk & Western.

It was carrying passengers from Norfolk to Petersburg, about 76 miles away, when it derailed.

“Many people seemed stunned,” said Barry Minsberg, 32, of Norfolk, who had been waiting at the Suffolk depot to photograph the train as it went by. “What I saw was several people being loaded into ambulances with blood on their shirts, bandages.”

Fort said that the cause of the derailment probably would not be known for at least a day.