A South Shore Line train headed for Chicago Monday morning hit a dump truck stalled on the tracks in Gary, injuring two passengers on the train.

No other injuries were reported at the time.

The crash was the first since the South Shore Line began running more and faster trains to and from Chicago after completing its Double Track project last month.

It happened around 7:45 a.m. at the Rutledge Street crossing just north of 3rd Street, west of the Gary Metro station.

Michael Noland, the railroad’s president and general manager, went to the crash scene.

He said the truck driver told investigators that the truck stalled on the tracks, and that he got out of the truck before the train hit it.

Noland said the westbound train would have been going 60 mph in that area before the engineer saw the truck and hit the brakes.

The collision spun the truck around and tore off its hood. The truck’s rear end also hit the side of the train, Noland said.

The truck, which wasn’t loaded at the time, wound up parallel to the tracks, facing west.

The train’s engineer was not injured but probably was shaken up, Noland said.

Two passengers asked to be taken to the hospital and were taken in an ambulance, he said.

He said 80 other passengers got on the next westbound train toward Chicago. The rest got on an eastbound train to the Gary Metro station, where buses chartered by the railroad were waiting to take them where they wanted to go.

Trains were delayed the rest of the morning because only one track was open at the crash scene.

The South Shore Line had struggled to get all its trains running on time after beginning its new schedule last month. But all the trains were on time Monday before the crash, Noland said.

Train 14 left the South Shore Line’s station at the South Bend International Airport at 6:27 a.m. central time and was scheduled to arrive at Chicago’s Millennium Station at 8:17 a.m., skipping several stops along the way. Train 114, the next westbound train, took most of its passengers toward Chicago, while the first train headed back to Gary.

Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter at the Post-Tribune.