Burning locomotive blocks roads

CHENEY – Fire Chief Tom Jenkins wasn’t fazed too much by the call of a car fire that came over his radio around 11:30 a.m. last Saturday morning.

“I was thinking, no problem, my guys can handle it,” Jenkins said.

That changed a few minutes later when he heard crews were still dealing with the issue, and that it wasn’t a car fire — it was a fire in the locomotive of a westbound Burlington Northern Santa Fe train. The three-engine train — two in the front pulling and one at the rear pushing — consisted of 100 cars containing over 14,000 pounds of soybeans bound for Centralia, Wash. and was passi...