Anyone heard what happened to Amtrak #49 this morning in La Porte IN?
It happened at MP-468 which should be right downtown.
They were getting a lot of snow this morning and I don’t know if that had anything to with it or not.
I had heard over the scanner that either a broken wheel/axle caused it.
Last I heard they were “Walking” trains by the de-railed car.
gtirr
Yep, it was in the Chicago Tribune this morning…no injuries and it said passengers were either taken to Chicago on the front part of the train or put on another train and sent also to Chicago. Parts of the area (most notably Michigan City, IN) got as much as 36" of snow over the weekend. They are at the southern tip of Lake Michigan and get lots of snow that those of us in the Chicago suburbs out west do not get. Interesting that they are only about 90 miles away and we got no snow to speak of this weekend and they got from between 22 and 36 inches…wow!
Yes, our intrepid driver Nora got caught in that stuff yesterday. She’s OK. I heard that there were lots of cars just being abandoned. The snow was preceded by a sharp drop in temperature, so there was no doubt plenty of ice underlying it.
I went to work yesterday under clear skies, and when I got to my tower at Proviso, things were clear as far as the city (typical unobstructed view of the skyline). But beyond that, the cloud bank was like a gray wall, and was noticeable well into the night.
Just an up-date to my original post:
The Lounge car which was the 6th car in the train suffered a broken wheel as the train was running it’s authorized speed of 79 MPH.
The Conductor was riding in this car when he heard a loud crash and told everyone to hit the floor and then called the engineer to stop the train ASAP.
By some miracle no one was hurt and the train came to safe stop.
They had called in buses to take people from the rear of the train to Chicago, but as was noted above, heavy snow prevented them getting to the scene.
However Amtrak # 29 came along and picked up all the passengers from the rear end and #49 cut away from the lounge car and resumed it’s trip to Chicago.
I would say “Somebody” was looking after those passengers on that train yesterday!!!
gtirr
But also it appears the crew and supervision were on the ball in handling the situation and deserve credit.
As a friend of mines mom would say, the angels were busy that day.
stay safe
Joe
I was on the Coast Starlight several years ago coming back from LA. There was a concert going on in the Oakland Coliseum, and these idiots went around the gates, and got squashed as the starlight was going pretty fast. I was stitting next to the conductor, when the train hit the car, and you could feel the bump. This was a long train, so every train car must have gone over it. By the time we came to a stop, there was nothing left of the car. I felt sorry for the people in the car, because they were late for a concert, they went around the gates, and lost their lives. I have never seen a car get so destroyed. But the Conductor new exactly the second he felt the bump, how bad it was, and went to help out the people down there. Those guy do truly know how to help really fast. The amazing thing was that there wasn’t much dammage done to the F40, it was barely dented.
Brad
Yes, I would say that the angels were VERY busy that day!!
Thank Heaven no one was seriously hurt. That crew did a
fantastic job!!