Railroad traffic on the Union Pacific line between San Antonio and Laredo was halted Friday afternoon, September 8, after a maintenance crane on a road-railer truck caught fire just north of Dilley. According to a report filed at the Frio County Sheriff’s Office, the machine caught fire after coming into contact with a power line. A Union Pacific worker at the scene told responding deputies that the fire appeared to have started while he was changing batteries in a building near the tracks. The Dilley Volunteer Fire Department responded to the blaze shortly before 3 p.m. but was unable to prevent the total loss of the crane truck. Railway traffic was paused for the remainder of the day until a wrecker service was able to remove the burned vehicle from the single-track mainline.
