SHARON — An Amtrak train passing through Sharon with 76 people aboard struck a flatbed trailer hauling a load of stone destined for Massachusetts, demolishing the flatbed and leaving tons of broken stone on the ground. However, there were no reported injuries to either the occupants on the train or the driver of vehicle, officials reported.

Amtrak Train 55, which left St. Albans at 9:15 a.m., struck a tractor trailer truck as it was crossing the tracks on Quarry Road near Route 14 about 3½ miles south of the intersection of routes 14 and 132, according to Vermont State Police and Amtrak.

The train, known as the Vermonter, was carrying 68 passengers and eight crew members, according to an Amtrak spokesperson.

The driver of the tractor trailer was identified police as Michael Delaney, 62, of Leicester, Mass., operating a vehicle for Lajoie Brothers Transport of Charlton, Mass. Earlier in the morning, the truck been loaded with a shipment at Black River Quarries on Quarry Road and was crossing the railroad tracks to reach Route 14 when the Amtrak train collided with the flatbed carrying 34 pallets of thinstone veneer rocks, according to Heath Blackburn, co-owner of Black River Quarries.

No information was available on Monday about which party — the vehicle operator or the train operator — might be at fault in the crash, which is now under investigation by the Vermont DMV Enforcement and Safety Division.

Blackburn and his brother and Black River Quarries co-owner Jay Blackburn in interviews on Monday afternoon called it fortunate that no one was reported injured in the incident.

“The driver was OK. The passengers were OK. The crew was OK, thank God everyone was lucky,” Jay Blackburn said. “That’s the only silver lining in this thing.”

Dustin Potter, assistant chief of the Sharon Volunteer Fire Department, said first responders were on the scene shortly after the crash was called in only to discover that their services, fortunately, were not required and even the struck vehicle appeared only partially damaged.

“The tractor was not damaged in any way,” said Potter, explaining the oncoming train “caught the trailer and took the trailer off of the tractor completely” and called it “sheer luck” that the driver was not injured.

With services not required, Potter said the Sharon fire department crew had cleared the scene within 30 minutes.

Passengers and crew members were stranded for a couple hours in Sharon before Amtrak could dispatch another engine and pull the carriages with passengers on-board to White River Junction, where they were transferred onto buses to continue their journey, an Amtrak spokesperson said.

Although the railroad track crossing on Quarry Road does not have a mechanical crossing gate, it is marked at both ends with warning signs. The crossing sees one to two truckloads per week at this time of year running between Route 14 and the quarry facility as well as daily crossings with employee vehicles, the Blackburns said.

The truck driver “claims he couldn’t see the train coming. But if you stand (at the crossing) you can see half a mile in either direction,” Heath Blackburn said. He first learned about what happened when the driver called him a few minutes after he had left the quarry site and reported that “a train hit me.”

Toni Clithero, Amtrak program manager for the Vermont Agency of Transportation, said the maximum allowable speed for a train traveling along the track between Sharon and Hartford is 59 miles per hour.

Clithero, who was helping to coordinate passengers transferring onto two waiting buses in White River Junction to continue their travel, said that no passenger was even thrown from their seat in the crash.

The buses would stop at every Amtrak station between White River Junction and New Haven, Conn., she said, where it would discharge the remaining bus passengers onto the train, which would thereafter make any regular scheduled stops until its termination in Washington, D.C., she said.

The shipment of thinstone veneer rocks was headed to a distributor in Massachusetts, where it would be retailed to customers.

Heath Blackburn said that of the 34 pallets on the flatbed, he estimated “maybe two to four” are salvageable. He said the cargo was valued at about $30,000 wholesale.

The Blackburn brothers purchased Black River Quarries, formerly known as Quimby Mountain Quarry, from South Royalton contractor Ted Kenyon in 2017.

Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com. Staff photographer James Patterson contributed to the reporting in this story.

CORRECTION: Toni Clithero is the Amtrak grants program manager with the Vermont Agency of Transportation. Her last name was mispelled in an earlier version of this story.

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