Town Construction Equipment Collides

With Railroad Overpass

By Andrew Gorosko

The driver of a town highway department dump truck that was hauling a backhoe/loader on a flatbed trailer apparently thought that the rig was sufficiently low to clear a low-clearance railroad overpass on Currituck Road Tuesday afternoon, but that was not the case.

As it was being hauled northward beneath the Housatonic Railroad’s rail freight bridge, the backhoe/loader’s cab struck the underside of the overpass, causing both the backhoe/loader and its trailer to roll sideways and crash into a concrete bridge abutment, becoming lodged there at a 45-degree angle.

The rail overpass crosses above Currituck Road, between its intersections with Tunnel Road and Signal Post Road. There were no injuries in the incident, police said.

Following the accident, which occurred about 1:55 pm, members of the town highway department and two heavy wrecker operators from Hilario’s Service Center responded to the scene to right the flipped construction equipment.

For the 80 minutes that it took to right the equipment and remove it from the area, traffic was detoured. No ambulances or fire vehicles were dispatched to the scene. Police monitored the progress of the incident.

In a report, police Patrol Officer Michael Edis wrote that town highway department driver George C. Birch, 61, of 9 Baldwin Road, who was driving a town-owned 2000 Western Star dump truck northward on Currituck Road, which was hauling the backhoe/loader on a trailer, did not realize that the backhoe/loader was too tall to fit beneath the railroad overpass and proceeded to drive beneath the overpass.

John Weymouth, 38, of 13 Walker Hill Road was a passenger in the truck.

The area is posted with warning signs stating that the overpass clearance is 10 feet, 6 inches, but the clearance is reportedly somewhat higher than that.

As the backhoe/loader was traveling beneath the overpass, the roof of its cab struck the overpass, causing the backhoe/loader and its trailer to roll sideways and fall onto the bridge abutment.

As the wrecker crews sought to right the wreck, a Housatonic Railroad freight train passed above the scene on the rail bridge, with the train’s engineers viewing the flipped equipment as they headed toward Hawleyville.

Town Public Works Director Fred Hurley said Wednesday that Mr Birch was hauling the backhoe/loader to a site near a large swamp off Currituck Road, where it was to have been used to clear some debris to improve drainage. The construction equipment received minimal damage, Mr Hurley said. A damage estimate was not available. The Caterpillar backhoe/loader can be repaired, he said.

The backhoe/loader was chained to the trailer and the two vehicles did not separate when they rolled sideways beneath the overpass. The railroad overpass was not damaged by the impact, Mr Hurley said.