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2 Injured In Train Wreck

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By GEOFF FOX

gfox@tampatrib.com

Published: March 4, 2009

DADE CITY - The impact was heard a mile away.

The driver of a flatbed truck was released from St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa about 5 p.m. after the truck was struck by a train Tuesday morning.

Kim Jan Nagelhout, 51, was attempting to drive across railroad tracks at Old Lakeland Highway and Holly Lane about 11 a.m. when the crash occurred, said Sgt. Steve Gaskins, spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol.
Gaskins said Nagelhout, a driver for Helena Chemical Co., was trying to turn into the business's driveway when the wreck happened. The crash caused 17 empty coal cars and two locomotives to derail. Tracks were ripped apart and several cars came to a rest side by side.

It could take 24 hours to clear the wreckage and repair the tracks, Gaskins said. The crossing is marked with a stop sign and "railroad crossing" signs, but there are no gates or lights.

The rural area is southeast of Dade City.

Willie Lee Brown, an engineer on the CSX train, was taken by ambulance to Pasco Regional Medical Center in Dade City; his condition was not immediately available.

"It just sounded like all the cars crushing together," said Barry Kahl, who drove a mile from his house to the site on a four-wheeler. "It went on longer than I thought it would. I was working outside when it happened. It just sounded like a bunch of crashes."

Gary Boggs, who lives about 100 yards from the crash site, said the collision shook his mobile home.

"I just heard a loud boom," Boggs said. "I had the stereo going, so I'm not sure what time it was. My neighbor was working in his yard, and it just went 'kaboom.'

"

The stretch of tracks through rural Pasco County has been the site of many wrecks in the past.

In October, an elderly man was killed about a half-mile south of Tuesday's crash site when his sport utility vehicle was hit by a train; witnesses said the man did not try to maneuver out of the train's path.

In May 2004, a man in a pickup was killed as he tried to cross the tracks at the Hillsborough-Pasco line, just east of State Road 39, south of Zephyrhills.

In the 1990s, at least three crashes happened on the railroad line near the former Lykes Agri Sales location on U.S. 98 Bypass.

In April 1992, a freight train collided with a tractor-trailer, sending the truck driver flying from the cab and tossing the trailer airborne. The driver, thrown 30 feet, recovered from serious injuries.

In November 1995, a freight train loaded with orange juice smashed into a pickup truck south of the city and derailed, chewing up more than 200 yards of track and toppling 13 boxcars. The driver of the pickup survived.

A year later, a tractor-trailer loaded with empty egg cartons was torn in two when it collided with a freight train. Nobody was hurt.

A man eluding Zephyrhills police was killed in August 1999 when he drove around crossing gates along County Road 54.

In March 2000, a Brooksville woman survived a wreck in which the back of her pickup was struck by a train; she had tried to turn onto an access road leading to Lykes.

News Channel 8 reporter Katie Coronado contributed to this report. Reporter Geoff Fox can be reached at (813) 779-4613.

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