[4/7/04]Amtrak’s City of New Orleans gave a couple of jerks and then tipped over, said the Rev. Melvin Bolden, a resident of Vicksburg who was a passenger on the train when it derailed Tuesday night.

Bolden, pastor of St. Peter M.B. Church on Crawford Street, and his wife, Doris, had boarded the City of New Orleans at its Jackson stop and were on their way to Champaign, Ill., for a conference related to Mrs. Bolden’s job at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center.

The accident happened in Yazoo County just north of the Yazoo-Madison county line. All nine cars derailed, leaving only the engine on the tracks.

In a phone interview from a Jackson hotel room where he was taken, Bolden said he and his wife were just sitting in one of the passenger cars talking when the wreck happened.

“It got kind of rough. It come to two or three bumps, and it started going off the track,” he said.

As the cars were tipping over, Bolden said he was trying to cushion his wife from injury.

“It happened so fast, there was nothing you could really do,” he said.

After everything had quieted down, Bolden said rescuers seemed to arrive quickly.

“It couldn’t have been more than 30 minutes,” he said. “And the civilians, they seemed to come out of the woodwork.”

Bolden said he and his wife were separated after they were helped from the train. He went to one Jackson hospital and she to another. He said neither of them was seriously injured and only had bruises.

They and others were taken to the hotel for the night by Amtrak.

Their trip to Champaign has been canceled, Bolden said, and he and his wife were to return to Vicksburg as soon as they heard from Amtrak today.