Driver escapes injury in train truck collision

A Pratt man was not injured following a train versus truck accident at 6:37 p.m. at a rural crossing 1.5 miles west of Cullison.

Stephen Jackson, 25 of Pratt, was east bound on SW 10th Street in a 2003 Peterbilt tractor pulling an oilfield salt water tanker. A Union Pacific piggy back cargo train was also east bound. The street and the tracks run almost parallel at the crossing. Jackson had to make a sharp right turn off SW 10th Street to cross the tracks. Jackson said he didn't hear the train and didn't see it until he turned south to cross the tracks.

He managed to get the tractor clear but the train broke the saltwater tanker trailer in two with the trailer wheels on the north side of the tracks and the tanker on the south side of the tracks and on the east side of the access road from U.S. 54 to the tracks. The tractor broke free of the tanker and stopped upright on the west side of the access road.

The truck and tanker belonged to Siroky Oil Management of Pratt. The tanker spilled salt water on both sides of the track. The salt water was mixed with oil and soaked into the ground on the south side of the tracks and on the north side including a portion of Arlie Stonestreet's lawn that abuts the roadway on the north side of the tracks. The Stonestreet house sits several feet north of the tracks.

Neither the train engineer, Bill Montgomery of Pratt, nor the conductor, Craig Bryant, 28 of Dalhart, Texas, were injured in the crash. The locomotive was covered with saltwater and oil. The train was about a mile long and was a piggy back cargo container Z train.