Railroad officials were investigating the cause of a trail derailment Tuesday near the intersection of Roanoke Road and Pyne Road.

There were no injuries or chemical spills.

“We’ll look at the tracks, the rail cars and locomotives, and how the train was being operated, and go from there,” said Gary Sease, a spokesman for CSX Transportation in Jacksonville, Fla.

He said he expected the cars to be cleared from the track by late Tuesday night and the track restored after midnight.

Five empty boxcars and an automobile carrier hauling new Nissans went off the tracks, Sease said. He said they struck two other empty boxcars being stored on a side track.

The Nissans remained on the auto carrier, and it wasn’t clear if any of them were damaged.

Raymond Hodnette, who lives on Pyne Road about 500 feet from the tracks, said he was in his yard playing with his dogs when “I started hearing a lot of loud rattling and then an extremely loud noise.”

“The house and yard shook like there was a small earthquake,” said Hodnette, the media specialist at LaGrange High School. “I looked back through the woods and saw a car leaning on the tracks, and a big cloud of dust. I was pretty sure it was a derailment and called 911” at 9:58 a.m.

Justin Caswell, an off-duty Troup County firefighter, was delivering hay on Cofield Road less than a mile away when he saw the 75-car train go by. A few minutes later, “I heard about six loud booms like the sound of metal hitting metal.” He went to the scene and realized what caused the noise.

Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@lagrangenews.com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 235.