A MAJOR investigation was launched after a freight train carrying diesel fuel and kerosene heating oil derailed, causing one of the tank wagons to burst into flames.

At the time of the accident in Ayrshire, Scotland, a rail over-road bridge collapsed, but at the time of going to press investigators could not confirm the cause of the derailment.

The DB Schenker train hauled by a Class 66 locomotive was travelling from Mossend in Glasgow to Riccarton in Ayr-shire on a single line section when it derailed near Stewarton, between Barrhead and Kilmarnock, at around 6am on Tuesday 27 January.

The loco and four leading wagons remained on the track, but the rear six wagons were derailed and overturned, one of them becoming an inferno as fuel ignited and spread from the ruptured tank.

People living some way from the scene reported a huge pall of thick, black smoke rising from the crash scene and within minutes emergency services were alerted.

Firefighters spent three hours battling with 50ft-high flames from the blazing wagon and the nearby A735 road had to be closed.

Assistant chief fire officer Dave Goodhew said of the bridge collapse: “I think the time of day was lucky and the fact that there were no cars going under the bridge when this incident occurred. The train, from what we understand, managed to get over the bridge.”

British Transport Police officers started a full site investigation and the Rail Accident Investigation Branch was on site on 29 January to carry out a day-long investigation into the cause of the accident.

Fuel was drained from the derailed wagons to guard against potentially environmentally-damaging leakage.

British Transport Police said the 45-year-old driver of the train had not been injured and no other injuries had been reported, but the derailed wagons damaged an electricity pylon, cutting off power to a nearby housing estate.

A Network Rail spokesman confirmed that the damaged rail-over-road bridge had received its last scheduled structural examination in February of last year when no faults had been found, and has since been subject to continuing routine visual inspections.

He added that recent engineering work in the vicinity had been in connection with installation of new track panels in readiness for the doubling of the line and did not in any way involve the bridge structure.

“The bridge is one of five or six different factors we will be looking into, ” he said.

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