Union Pacific’s northbound train from Pueblo, Colorado, to North Yard, Denver, CO, had a pulled drawbar on Saturday, 15 March 2025 at Castle Rock, CO. UP 7504 stopped the train with all cars on the rails. This happened about 7:00 AM on the Joint Line, main track 2, just south of Castle Rock.
3 Likes
Union Pacific’s northbound train from Pueblo, Colorado, to North Yard, Denver, CO, had a pulled drawbar on Saturday, 15 March 2025 at Castle Rock, CO. UP 7504 stopped the train with all cars on the rails. This happened about 7:00 AM on the Joint Line, main track 2, just south of Castle Rock.
3 Likes
Union Pacific’s northbound train from Pueblo, Colorado, to North Yard, Denver, CO, had a pulled drawbar on Saturday, 15 March 2025 at Castle Rock, CO. UP 7504 stopped the train with all cars on the rails. This happened about 7:00 AM on the Joint Line, main track 2, just south of Castle Rock.
2 Likes
Nice!
Wow, how does something like that happen?
1 Like
Metal fatigue over time coupled with slack action.
2 Likes
That would appear to me, a nonrail, to be a more extensive repair than would be done in a set out track.
It seems to already be isolated from the rest of the train, would this have power coupled to the undamaged end and pulled to the nearest carshop in that direction?
If the nearest repair facility was in the direction of the damaged end, would there be any means of pulling the damaged car in that direction?
The reporting marks show it belongs to Pullman Leasing Company ( GE Capital, I Believe), obviously they will have some input and financial responsibility in this.
That car is no spring chicken, would that kind of damage be enough to be a death sentence for that car?
Doug
Phosphate service cars literally getting ate from the inside out. That stuff will corrode all but stainless steel. It’s hell on agricultural equipment and there’s retrofit kits on the market to get rid of all steel lines on fertilizer applicator equipment and replace it with stainless steel.
1 Like
“Pulled drawbar”? It looks to me like it pulled out half the innards of that car.
(My uneducated inexperienced opinion)
1 Like
Task #1 for the Car Dept. is to get the car off the main track - by any means necessary WITHOUT doing damage to the track or track structure. The second job is to release the damaged coupling from the car to which it is still coupled - in as much as this is several thousand pounds and is held in place by the ‘twist’ between the pair of couplers - THIS IS DANGEROUS.
The car with end out, will be handled from the end that still has the coupler in place. Once the car is moved to a set out track, off the Main Track, the Car Dept. will contact the car owner for their disposition orders. If the car is loaded, a move will be set up to get the car to its destination and unloaded before the car is either ‘band aided’ for movement to the owner empty, or scrapped on the property when the failure happened.
4 Likes
I didn’t know tyco made real rail cars.
1 Like
If the destination isn’t close, it’ll prob be sent to the nearest shop track to be transloaded (if not sooner at an available siding), then I’m sure scrapped.
Those PLCX cars are pretty much at the end of life.
Somebody ain’t gonna be getting a Christmas bonus. You break `em, you bought them.