Boxcar Fire Shuts Down Cranford Street

A fire inside of a boxcar had a portion of Georgia St., which connects Cranford and Clark, shut down for several hours early this morning.

The Clark Fire Department received a report about a smoke condition coming from a rail car on the tracks on a side spur around 4 a.m. According to Clark fire Chief Andy Beach, his team had a hard time finding it at first, but eventually found the smoking on the border of Cranford and Clark behind a row of houses that sit near the tracks.

"It's considered a fire incident because it had smoke showing from the car at that time," said Beach. "It looks to be machinery scrap metal that comes off machine parts mixed with some machine oils for lubricants, so there were some lubricants involved, and that's why Haz-Mat is here, to take care of that situation."

Multiple fire trucks from Cranford and Clark as well as several Haz-Mat units were on the scene on Georgia St, parked in a residential area, going through back yards to get to the boxcar. They were there until just after 8 a.m., when the car was moved, relocating about a half-mile down the tracks.

"At first we came over, and we decided to monitor it," added Beach. "When it did flame up, we started putting water on it. Haz-Mat started containing everything. We don't know what caused it. We're leaving that up to Con-Rail and CTX once we get the fire taken care of."

When Con-Rail arrived, a crane was used to pull the boxcar off the main line and move it to a side spur just behind a self-storage building off Central Avenue. Crews continued to spray water on the boxcar well into the morning.

Beach added there was no danger to residents.

Freight trains were running again in that area as of 8:30 a.m.