Minnesota railroad tracks filled with perfectly placed corn spill for more than third of a mile
Minnesota railroad tracks were turned into a yellow brick road after corn spill filled the rails for more than third of a mile. A picture of the 'Wizard of Oz' scene has since gone viral on Twitter.
A northern suburb of Minneapolis resembled a scene out of "The Wizard of Oz" this week after a freight train spilled enough corn to fill a stretch of railroad tracks.
The photo of this impromptu yellow brick road – or in this case, several thousand feet of railroad tracks – in Crystal went viral after Mike Parker posted a photo on Twitter.
The image showed bushels and bushels of corn appearing to perfectly fill the area between the tracks, creating a striking contrast to the snow-covered ground on either side.
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"Corn spilled on the tracks by my house the ducks and deer haven’t found it yet," Parker wrote.
After the initial post, Twitter user Alex "Boreal" Forrest shared the photo on Monday and it went viral, gaining over 15,000 retweets and 109,000 likes. Many online immediately doubted how authentic the image was.
"This is the strangest, most aesthetically pleasing thing that I have seen all day," one person replied.
Train tracks are filled with corn spilled from a train on a Canadian Pacific line and sat two inches deep for just under a half-mile, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020, in Crystal, Minn. (Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune via AP)
Another user, Jimmy Peyton, described it as a "substantial amount" of corn.
"I bet the hopper bottoms come open and they didn’t know about it," he wrote. "Someone is going to have to answer for all of that."
By Tuesday, local media at the scene confirmed the photo was, in fact, real. The spill stretched for about 2,000 feet along the Canadian Pacific Railway line, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
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Assuming the corn was about 1.5 inches deep the entire way, the Star Tribune estimated the spill would amount to about 900 bushels. That's about $3,400 worth of corn at Tuesday's prices on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
The spill did not hamper train traffic through the area. Two trains were spotted on Tuesday making their way along the now-yellow pathway.
A train makes its way along a path where corn spilled from a train on a Canadian Pacific line in Crystal, Minn. (Elizabeth Flores/Star Tribune via AP)
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Canadian Pacific Railway spokesman Andy Cummings told Fox News on Thursday morning the railroad has been "made aware" of the spill along its right of way in Crystal, and that crews were working to clean up the spilled corn.
Neighbors who live near the tracks told the Star Tribune they've seen grain spills before, but nothing like this week's. If temperatures were warmer, said Gary Bates, who lives next to the railway, birds would have swarmed the tracks.
“There are deer and raccoon in the area, but they’re hunkered down, is my guess,” Bates told the Star Tribune. “They didn’t get the e-mail.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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