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Feb 23, 2006 7:36 AM

The City of Baltimore and CSX Transportation (CSXT) have announced a settlement agreement in the City of Baltimore's litigation against CSXT arising from the July 18, 2001, train derailment and fire in the Howard Street Tunnel.

Eleven railcars derailed and one broke open and became inflamed. The incident snarled traffic and caused the evacuation of some nearby areas. Several days were required to extinguish the fire, according to news reports.

According to the CSXT information, the settlement terms include:

•CSXT will pay the city $2 million for costs incurred by the city as a result of the derailment and tunnel fire.

•The city and CSXT will increase communications about hazardous and non-hazardous rail shipments. This includes shared access to police radio frequencies and real-time surveillance images from tunnel security cameras, as well as the sharing of information about shipping patterns for use in planning future security measures.

•The parties will request jointly an inspection of the Howard Street Tunnel by federal and state regulatory authorities, and CSXT agrees to do what the regulatory authorities state needs to be done.

The settlement, which was finalized on February 13, 2006, assigns no fault to either party, according to the CSXT information.

The city filed its case in July 2004. The case was scheduled to go to trial March 13, 2006.