Gas cans suggest fire that destroyed state-owned former circus train cars was arson
Investigators are still trying to determine what caused a fire that destroyed four former circus train cars in Nash County last month, but the discovery of two gas cans nearby suggests it may have been arson, according to a sheriff’s office representative.
Chief Deputy Brandon Medina told a legislative committee Thursday that the gas cans were not the kind typically found on a train and were likely brought to the isolated spot in the woods where the N.C. Department of Transportation was storing the railroad cars.
“That would lead me to believe that someone started that fire,” Medina told members of the Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee.
Medina said no witnesses have come forward and no fingerprints were recovered from the train or the gas cans. He said the investigation is being led by a fire specialist from the State Bureau of Investigation.
The fire damaged four of the nine rail cars beyond repair. NCDOT has put the other five up for auction on the state’s surplus property website and set a deadline of April 18 for bids.
NCDOT bought the cars from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey when the circus shut down in 2017. The department paid $383,000 and planned to gut and refurbish the cars for use on the Piedmont passenger train that runs between Raleigh and Charlotte.
NCDOT later received federal grants that allowed it to order new cars instead. It put the circus train cars up for auction in late 2020, setting minimum bids that would allow it to recoup what it had spent for them, but got no offers.
NCDOT did not have room in any of its rail yards to store the cars, said Jason Orthner, head of NCDOT’s Rail Division. So it chose to keep them on a remote section of unused state-owned tracks east of Spring Hope, where they’ve been since 2017.
Fire had been burning for a while
An employee at the Bass Farm sausage plant on U.S. 64A reported the fire just before 7 a.m. on March 10, said Nick Clerkin of the General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division. Clerkin said he spoke with Kevin Lee, chief of the fire department in nearby Momeyer.
“His assessment is that the fire had been burning through the night prior to the call being made, as some of the cars were already severely damaged at that point,” Clerkin told the committee.
The cars were about a mile from the nearest road, beyond the reach of firefighters and their equipment. About 20 minutes after the fire was reported, the fire chief in Nashville reached out to Alan Bridgers at the Carolina Coastal Railway to ask if it could bring in a locomotive to move the burning cars.
Bridgers said before the engine could reach the cars, railroad workers needed to restore some rails that had been removed to separate the active track from the unused section where the circus cars were stored. With the tracks reconnected, the locomotive pulled the cars out to the crossing at South Old Franklin Road, where firefighters could douse the flames.
Orthner said the wheel assemblies on the burned cars are salvageable and can probably be resold. The rest will likely be sold for scrap metal.
As for the surviving cars, the state has set a minimum bid of $6,588 each. Orthner said the market for 58-year-old rail cars has largely dried up, though NCDOT has received some interest from operators of private excursion trains and museums.
If the department fails to find a buyer by April 18, it will organize a live online auction following a process spelled out by the General Assembly in a bill signed into law March 17.
‘It’s time to just cut our losses’
Some members of the legislative committee wondered if all that effort was worth it. Sen. Mike Woodard, a Democrat from Durham, noted that the cars are probably worth no more than the $33,000 NCDOT is asking for all five of them, and half joked about finishing the job that an apparent arsonist started.
“To me, it’s time to just cut our losses and get rid of these things,” Woodard said. “I’ll bring the marshmallows if somebody would bring the igniter.”
Sen. Michael Lazzara, a Republican from Jacksonville, agreed, saying he thought the state should scrap the cars “and move on.”
“It’s more of a liability and hazard than it is an asset,” Lazzara said. “And to keep them there is, I think, not a good decision on our part.”
But Sen. Tom McInnis, a Republican from Richmond County, noted that it was the General Assembly that dictated to NCDOT how it should go about selling off surplus equipment, including the circus train cars.
“This body gave a direction to the rail division and DOT in previous legislation as to what should be done with this equipment,” McInnis said. “I think Jason is doing that, and I think he needs to continue to move forward and follow the rules and laws that we put on the books on this issue.”
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Gas cans suggest fire that destroyed state-owned former circus train cars was arson."
