Derailment cleanup narrowed U.S. 377 south of Whitesboro into September

Drivers on U.S. Highway 377 south of Whitesboro, in neighboring Grayson County, were still losing a lane at times in early September while crews cleaned up after an August train derailment, according to Grayson County commissioners court records. A county commissioner confirmed in late August that one person involved in the incident had died.

Commissioner Lindsay Wright told the court at its Aug. 25 meeting that a train had derailed along the highway earlier in the month. Wright confirmed the death at that session. The statement, as recorded, did not say how the person died.

At the same meeting, Wright said recovery work would close the southbound lane from time to time and that the cleanup would take a while. Two weeks later, the county's Sept. 8 meeting record showed the highway still narrowing to one lane at times for that work. GvilleTX could not find an accessible primary source showing whether the restrictions continued into October. The newsroom also has not confirmed which railroad operated the train or what caused the derailment.

It is also unconfirmed whether anything spilled at the site. For spills in general, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality says cleanup should return a site to its condition before the release, or to background conditions. The agency's regional offices usually review cleanups that take less than six months. Longer jobs, along with spills that reach groundwater, may be referred to its Remediation Division.

Federal investigators have documented a case in another state where a derailment killed a motorist. In October 2023, cars from a derailed BNSF coal train fell onto Interstate 25 in Pueblo, Colorado, and at least one struck a truck and killed its driver, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The board attributed the derailment to a failed thermite weld. BNSF then began analyzing failed welds and required its welding supervisors to audit a random sample of thermite welds every month.

Closer to home, a Union Pacific derailment in Fort Worth in April 2019 released about 65,000 gallons of denatured ethanol, the NTSB reported. The railroad estimated the damage at roughly $6.3 million.

The country's largest freight railroads derailed less often in 2025. The Association of American Railroads, which summarizes Federal Railroad Administration data, says their derailment rate fell 17% from the year before. About seven in 10 of those derailments happened in rail yards or on industry track, the group says, and the rest happened on main lines.

Federal Railroad Administration records describe an earlier derailment in Collinsville, Texas. On May 16, 1979, 28 Missouri-Kansas-Texas freight cars left the tracks there. Investigators found that the dispatcher and the track foreman had not made sure the train crew received a speed restriction.