PANAMA CITY — After five years living near train tracks on East Seventh Street, Eric Geraci has grown accustomed to the sound of trains passing, but there was something different about the one that passed Wednesday morning.
It felt and sounded like an earthquake, and it shook stuff out of his pantry, Geraci said.
Eight cars on a Bay Line train passing through Kraft Avenue between East Seventh Street and East Eighth Street derailed around 11 a.m., according to Chuck Dianis with Genessee & Wyoming Inc., the company that owns and operates the Bay Line Railroad. The Bay Line is a 103-mile line that carries commodities between Panama City and Alabama.
Nobody was injured by the derailment, which left the eight cars and their cargo of pine chips tilted but upright and stranded across Kraft Avenue, effectively blocking the roadway while a crew traveled from Georgia to literally get the train back on track. The engine and other unaffected cars had been moved from the area Wednesday afternoon.
Workers arrived at the scene late Wednesday, but it was unknown how long the process of righting the cars would take.
It was not clear how the train got off the track. Geraci thought it might have been caused by shifting soils due to recent rains.
“The track just kind of buckled,” he said. “I don’t know if it was the rain or what.”