“This sounded just really a lot louder than normal,” says Huckabee. “I thought, ‘Man that's got to be a really heavy loaded train.’”
It turns out the train was unloaded.
Huckabee says it felt like he was in an earthquake.
“I didn't think anything about it until I felt all the vibration stuff in the shop,” Huckabee continues.
So he walked outside and got a good look at the damage.
“I’ve got a storage building there's attached to the back garage. It's kind of destroyed,” Huckabee says. “And in the yard, the fence knocked over a pretty good size tree over into the side of the house and took the gutters off the side of the house and probably did a little damage to the patio cover.”
With the police and fire department directly on the other side of the tracks, Huckabee found no need to call 911.
“I just called my wife and told her we had a train in the backyard,” Huckabee says. “She said, ‘What?’”
The cause of the derailment is still under investigation.
Huckabee says he knows it could have been much worse.
“We could have been out here on the back porch if it had been later this afternoon enjoying the weather,” he says. “It's been pretty nice lately.”