Excavator smashes railroad crossing warning lights

WASILLA — A dump truck hauling an excavator with its arm up crashed into a set of railroad warning lights last week, costing the railroad about $55,000.

Wasilla Police Chief Gene Belden said the dump truck was heading into Wasilla on Knik-Goose Bay Road.

“A dump truck with a big track hoe on the back had the boom up instead of putting it down on the bed and took out some wires down KGB and took out that crossbar,” Belden said.

He said the wires farther down the road didn’t stop or slow down the truck. It was the railroad crossing that finally stopped him. Belden’s officers were on scene to keep the area clear, and there was a slight slowdown in traffic.

“What we did was just blocked off underneath the arm. The arm was teetering. It could have fell,” Belden said. “It wasn’t something that required several people, it required just one officer to be there for protection.”

The piece he was worried about he said was a metal cross bar that goes across half the road with lights affixed to it. There’s one set on each side of KGB. The Alaska Railroad calls them cantilevers.

“We estimate that the cost of repairing and replacing the cantilever was somewhere between $55,000 and $65,000 damage,” railroad spokeswoman Stephanie Wheeler said.

That estimate includes labor and parts to replace the cantilever, delays to rail service and closing down the railroad’s mainline.

The railroad took the cantilever down May 22 and replaced it the next afternoon, Wheeler said. The railroad tends to work quickly when it comes to important safety equipment like that.

She said the driver was working for Northern Dame Construction out of Wasilla and was cited by the state Department of Transportation’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement wing.

“State law requires a permit for any load that’s over 15 feet,” Wheeler said. “The cantilever is right at about 17.5-feet high.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.