RAIL CAR OF ‘NONHAZARDOUS’ MATERIAL BLOWS UP BY THE RAILROAD-THEMED HARDY YARDS SITE Union Pacific gives KHOU the answer to yesterday’s entry in the semi-regular citywide game of what’s-that-mysterious-cloud-of-smoke: a railcar loaded with lithium batteries headed to a recycling plant, which caught fire and exploded early Sunday evening. The blowout happened on a stretch of tracks skirting the southern edge of the former railyard now being redeveloped into the Hardy Yards mixed use area (complete with artsy homages to the land’s brownfield past). The explosion cracked walls and took out some windows at at least one house nearby on Chapman St. south of the tracks, in the strip of otherwise-mostly-industrial properties north of I-10 between N. Main St. and the reincarnating Elysian St. bridge. Nobody seems to have been seriously injured; the exploding batteries themselves are technically considered non-hazardous material, a Union Pacific spokesman notes. [KHOU; previously on Swamplot] Photo of yesterday’s firefight near Hardy Yards: Air Alliance Houston