No injuries were reported but Amtrak service was interrupted Tuesday after a passenger train struck a tractor-trailer west of St. Louis.
The collision happened in Kirkwood a few minutes after the westbound train left downtown St. Louis around 4 p.m. Tuesday. Kirkwood is the first stop on Amtrak's afternoon Missouri River Runner route between St. Louis and Kansas City.
An Amtrak spokesperson told KMOX there was no significant damage to the train. Crews worked quickly to remove the semi so that the train could resume its trip.
About a dozen people were waiting for the train to arrive in Jefferson City at 6:15 p.m., shortly before its scheduled arrival. Volunteers Charlie and Mary Jane McCoy had received no word of the accident, and said the Amtrak app still showed the train on time.
A half hour after the scheduled arrival. Mary Jane McCoy contacted Amtrak officials, who said they had just learned of the accident. The McCoys said about 7:30 p.m., a passenger on the train texted her mother in the local station to say the train was just leaving Kirkwood, some three hours late.
It wasn't clear why the Arrow Box rig was on the tracks. Aerial footage showed the front of the train struck the rig's trailer and pushed it about 50 feet down the track.