FINE

Mo. highway buckles after rail cars hit overpass

A highway overpass in southeast Missouri collapsed early Saturday when rail cars slammed into one of the bridge’s pillars after a cargo train collision, authorities said. Seven people were injured, though none seriously.

The bridge collapsed after a Union Pacific train hit the side of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train at a rail intersection. Derailed rail cars then hit columns supporting the Highway M overpass, causing it to buckle and partially collapse.

The National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation into the cause of the cargo train collision, which happened about 2:30 a.m. near Chaffee, a town of about 3,000 southwest of Cape Girardeau.

Only two vehicles were on the overpass at the time. Five people in the vehicles were taken to Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, as were a Union Pacific train conductor and an engineer. All seven had been released by Saturday afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Felecia Blanton said.

”You’re driving down the road and the next thing you know the bridge is not there. … It could have been really bad,” Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter said.

The crash derailed about two dozen rail cars hauling scrap metal, automobiles and auto parts, tossing them into the overpass’ support columns. The highway was shut down for about 8 miles from Scott City to Chaffee.

The overpass was about 15 years old and in good condition but just couldn’t withstand the impact from the rail cars, Walter said.

Two 40-foot sections of the overpass buckled while two cars were on the roadway, sending the cars into the edges of the collapsed sections. A diesel fire also broke out in one of the locomotives after the collision, but was quickly extinguished, Walter said.

When Blanton heard about the crash, she immediately went online and saw video footage of the scene and was bracing for the worst, Blanton said. She said it was ”a real blessing” that the injuries were relatively minor, the most serious being a fracture.

”If you look at the pictures, they’re very dramatic, and there are no serious injuries,” she said. ”So it’s amazing.”

Walter said Deputy Justin Wooten was among the first at the scene and pulled the two Union Pacific employees out of the wrecked engine, which became lodged next to the train’s second engine. That engine began burning after the crash.

”We’re very fortunate he was there,” Walter said. He said all seven people injured were already out of the wreckage when he arrived about 15 minutes after the crash was reported.

”People were talking; they were coherent. They understood what was happening,” Walter said.

The cars on the overpass ”took a really bad hit” when they collided with the bridge sections, but ”they stayed on all four tires and they just hit and landed and that was it,” he said.

The accident came more than a week after a commuter train derailment in Connecticut that injured 70 people and disrupted service for days. That accident involved a railroad used by tens of thousands of commuters north of New York City.

In Washington state this past week, a bridge collapsed when a truck driver’s load bumped against the steel framework.

NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said while the investigations into both collapses are in the early stages ”there is no similarity” between the Missouri accident and the bridge collapse in Washington, which sent two vehicles and three people falling into the chilly water.

He noted that the Missouri bridge was rated ”good” after it was last inspected in February.

”This was not because of any lack of integrity of the bridge in southeast Missouri, but because of a train that derailed and had a bunch of rail cars slamming around, which knocked down a pier, which allowed the bridge to collapse,” he said.

”If you just look at the facts, there is no relationship other than some external object caused each of these bridges” to collapse, he added.

The Union Pacific train involved in the collision was carrying primarily automobiles or auto parts from Illinois to Texas, said UP spokeswoman Calli Hite. She said about a dozen UP railcars derailed.

Hite said there was no estimate yet on the amount of damage to the roadway or the rail cars.

BNSF spokesman Andy Williams said about 12 cars on the 75-car BNSF train derailed. The BNSF crew was not hurt.

Sumwalt said NTSB investigation will include routine testing of railroad employees for drugs and alcohol, testing the track and nearby rail signals and reviewing video footage from the front of the train in an effort to determine the likely cause. The NTSB will also review the bridge’s design.

The less people you chill with, the less problems you deal with.

MAY 20TH!!! ATLANTA

YUUUP! IN MY TREY VOICE

I had a great dinner last night in NewYork @manonrestaurant,they made some special vegan dishes,thank you

Grid 2 special edition comes with a car, costs $190,000

Think $60 is too much for a video game? Then you probably can’t afford the ‘BAC Mono Edition’ of Codemasters’ upcoming racer, Grid 2.

The special edition rings in at a tidy £125,000 ($188,700), making it officially the most expensive commercially available video game ever produced. In fact, they only made one of them, presumably because making more than one would be ostentatious.

So what can a couple hundred grand buy you these days? How about a racecar?

Indeed, the Mono edition’s crown jewel is a 170 mph BAC Mono supercar decked out in full Grid 2 livery. From the press release:

The BAC Mono is a British manufactured, road-legal, ultra-high performance supercar which stars in the game. Created from high-strength carbon fibre, the BAC Mono is an unrivalled example of light-weight performance engineering and its 2.3 litre, 280 bhp four cylinder power plant will propel its driver from 0-60 m.p.h. in just 2.8 seconds.

You’ll also get a full set of driver race wear — helmet, gloves, race suit and boots — because hopping behind the wheel of a vehicular beast of this magnitude wearing jean shorts and a tanktop is NOT okay.

If a dangerously powerful automobile isn’t quite enough, you’ll also be able to tweak the thing with a full day visit to the BAC factory, where you’ll chat with technicians and customize the car to your liking. Oh, and they threw in a PS3 and a copy of the game, in case you actually slow down long enough to play a video game.

It’s far and away the most elaborate video game special edition ever created, trouncing the likes of last year’s Black Ops II Care Package, which comes packed with a remote-controlled quadcopter. And it’s pricier than the most expensive video game ever, an exceedingly rare prototype copy of The Legend of Zelda, which went for $55,000 last August.

Of course, this is really just a fancy car that happens to come with a video game. Your move, Gran Turismo 6.

By Ben Silverman

oh shit!! I done found the vegan breakfast spot here in NY that serves all day