BANGOR – Efforts to upright three derailed railroad cars hauling paper turned into a fire scene Tuesday when welders trying to open up one of the cars ignited the large rolls of paper inside.

Heavy smoke billowed from the car, and a bystander who had been watching crews at work during the day said that flames 5 feet high shot up briefly from the rail car.

A section of State Street near the intersection of Hogan Road had been blocked off to allow crews space to work on the rail cars, which derailed Sunday and slid as least partway into the Penobscot River.

Caregivers at the veterans home that overlooks the State Street scene were alerted to the smoke that the wind was carrying in their direction.

“They’ve battened down the hatches up there,” Assistant Bangor Fire Chief Rick Cheverie said at the scene. Firefighters also were concerned that if the fire were left alone, the smoke would create a hazard for passing motorists. State Street was blocked off from Hogan Road to just above Chase Road.

Getting to the fire was no easy matter, however.

Before the fire started, work crews managed to move the rail car onto shore, but Cheverie said it still was only a few feet from the edge of the river and fairly deep water. Uncertain about how stable the car was on shore, the assistant fire chief said he wasn’t about to risk putting firefighters on or in the car until the situation was more certain.

“There’s no amount of paper worth my firefighters,” Cheverie said.

With a line attached to a 230-ton-capacity crane and three bulldozers in place to buttress the train car, workers planned to continue opening up the roof of the rail car to drop the paper rolls into the water, thereby putting out the fire and reducing the car’s weight.

By about 8 p.m. a worker using an acetylene torch and secured by a harness, rope and chain was perched on the car’s side, now facing upward. He cut through about 15 feet of the roof, which now faced the river, Bangor fire Lt. Chuck Rodway said. Six or seven of the rolls of paper dropped into the water. Cheverie said later that the rolls would be removed sometime Wednesday.

Firefighters first were called in at about 5:10 p.m., although the paper inside the car had been smoldering for half an hour to an hour before that. Firefighters were expected to stay on the scene until about 10:30 p.m.

Without the rolls of paper, the car would be much lighter and easier to lift and place back on the railroad tracks.

Firefighters garbed in cold-weather dive suits were stationed at either end of the rail car in case anyone fell in.

Cheverie said that the rolls of paper were about 4 feet tall and 5 feet wide. He didn’t know how many were inside.

The three cars were heading from Old Town to Northern Maine Junction in Hermon at about 11:30 a.m. Sunday when the train jumped the tracks. The train cars rode on the ties of the track before jumping off, a railroad police officer said Sunday.

The train is from Maine Central Railroad, which now operates under the Pan Am Railways name. Workers at the scene would not comment on what caused the derailment. An official at the company’s headquarters in North Billerica, Mass., did not immediately return phone calls Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, bolstered by two cranes and other heavy equipment, workers prepared to right one of the three railroad cars that derailed two days earlier.

For Cheverie, the situation could have been a lot worse.

“At least it’s paper and not some hazardous chemicals that we have to deal with,” he said.

BDN reporter Chelsey Ledue contributed to this report.