New Britain Dealing With Costs of Train Derailment

A new video released by the Department of Transportation shows the moment a freight train derailed in New Britain on Tuesday afternoon. 

City officials are already estimating the cost of clean up to be in the thousands. 

"The police officers is the biggest costs that we saw with the traffic details, blocking off the traffic, re-routing everyone and we had that happening for about seven hours," Mayor Erin Stewart told NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters.

City firefighters, the Department of Public Works employees and Health and Building Code officials have logged long hours too.

So far, the mayor says the rough estimate for cleaning up the debris is at least $10,000. It’s unclear whether the burden will go back to taxpayers.

"It’s a question of who do you seek reimbursement from? Is it Pan Am, is it Cherry Hill Construction, is it third party contractor still a lot of moving parts. The good news is, it is not going to cost as much as we initially anticipated because Cherry Hill construction is bringing in their equipment and they’re using their crews to do that clean up so alleviating a lot of the public works cost we could have occurred," Stewart added.

Massachusetts-based Pan Am railways owns the 24-mile track and Cherry Hill Construction leases the freight cars. A city spokesman in New Britain said they haven’t reached out to either.

Cherry Hill Construction’s owner tells NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters by phone that the incident wasn’t their issue.

The track was last inspected one day before the accident, according to a Pan Am spokesman.

Pan Am's crews and the Federal Railway Administration are investigating the two black boxes, train rails and cars to figure out what happened. 

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