Woman dies after vehicle strikes derailed train north of Collinsville

The woman who was driving a vehicle that collided with a derailed Union Pacific train has died of her injuries, according to an on-record report attributed to Collinsville Fire Chief Damon Stewart. Collinsville Fire's public information release places the wreck near U.S. 377 and County Line Church Road, north of town in Grayson County.

That release describes two events: a train derailment, and a southbound vehicle that struck the derailed train. The responder records do not state that a locomotive itself came off the rails. The Grayson County Office of Emergency Management identified the train as Union Pacific's and said the cause of the derailment remained under investigation. KTEN later published an update reporting that a woman involved in the car-versus-train accident had died.

Collinsville Fire reported that U.S. 377 reopened at 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 17, 2026, with both northbound and southbound lanes open after the derailment response.

Federal Railroad Administration inventory lists a crossing at County Line Church Road, number 795264R, as a Union Pacific public at-grade crossing with a maximum timetable speed of 60 mph. About 17 through trains pass over it across a full day and night, the road carries a few hundred vehicles daily, and a school bus route uses it. All 11 open crossings inside Collinsville belong to Union Pacific in that federal inventory.

Grayson County carries more of this than its neighbors to the west. FRA's current inventory counts roughly 160 open public at-grade crossings there, close to Denton County's total and several times what Cooke County has. Federal accident records for 2021 through 2025 log a dozen derailments in Grayson County, more than any other nearby county in the same query.

The federal data separate the two kinds of events. FRA counted nearly 1,000 reportable derailments nationwide in 2025 with no deaths recorded, and the Texas derailment records for that year show no deaths and no injuries. In those same 2025 FRA records, grade-crossing incidents recorded fatalities while reportable derailment records did not. Texas logged about 260 highway-rail grade-crossing incidents in 2025, with 28 people killed, and the state's yearly count has stayed within a narrow band since 2021, peaking in 2024. One of the two Grayson County crossing incidents in the 2025 records was fatal.

TxDOT directs the public to the FRA website as the official source for crossing and accident data and says it is the only Texas agency authorized to update the public portion of that database. State and federal programs have directed money toward rail grade-separation projects. Texas created an Off-System Rail Grade Separation State Fund Program backed by a $250 million supplemental appropriation, and TxDOT announced a federal award of roughly $755 million for grade-separation projects. In that announcement, the agency's executive director said eliminating at-grade rail crossings can improve safety, reduce congestion and keep people and goods moving more efficiently.