Caboose Fatalities

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

In the most recent Classic Trains, there’s an article about the experiences of a B&O trainmaster in West Virginia coal country.

Part of the trainmaster’s experiences was the fatal accident in a caboose when a train moving past the yard, on the main track, went into emergency stop because a switch had been left lined for the yard entrance and not the main (a violation of B&O operating rules that had been tolerated by crews and management for a long time before the trainmaster who wrote the article arrived).

One employee was killed in the caboose and another severely injured when the slack bunched-in and the resulting impact threw them violently (they were found inside the caboose - they weren’t tossed-out). I don’t have the magazine here with me, but I don’t recall reading in this terrible story how long the train was, but it was pulling empty hoppers, so I assume it wasn’t just a short cut of cars.

When a train goes into e-stop, does the whistle sound automatically? Could the unfortunate crewmen have had any time at all (maybe just a few seconds) to get a hold of something to brace for impact if they heard a steady whistle? I guess with an impact so violent, even if they had grabbed onto something they may have just been torn loose from it anyway.

Perfectly horrible…

2

Can’t this break a train in half? (slack)

3

For those who are not familiar with the B&O’s cabooses, keep in mind that most - if not all - of them were the side-“bay window” type, not the more stereotypical “cupola-on-top” type. On those, slack action could pitch a crewman from the seat up top and cause him to fall down the 6 feet or so to the floor below. In contrast, a bay-window caboose is all on one floor level, so there’s no place to fall to, other than from a standing position to the same floor that’s being stood upon.

  • Paul North.
4

The slack bunched-in when the locomotives hit the brakes because they saw a switch mis-lined, and the poor crewman got thrown forward.

BTW - my grandfather and uncle were longtime Clover Leaf/LE&W/NKP/NW employees in Indiana, with their last assignments being in Decatur, IN. Long live the Leave Early & Walk!

5

Oh, so the slack buntche uo in a train like a chain or rope? Very cool that youre grandfather and uncle were railroaders on the NKP Clovreleaf! My grandpah blew grain into 40 ft boxcars at Mellott. Just 5 miles south of me.

6

.

7

Not sure what whistle you might be referring to–some cabooses have one that is operated by the crew using air pressure from the trainline. If there’s an emergency application, said pressure is zero. About the only warning you’d get is if you happened to be watching an air gauge at the time. And even if the person who caught the gauge during the correct few seconds of observation were able to yell out to hang on, it wouldn’t prevent non-human objects–up to and including lighted stoves–from moving about and entrapping people.

8

There is no whistle warning when a train goes into emergency, but it does make a loud, unmistakable sound that any trainman will recognize. Every car dumps its share of the trainline air, and it sounds like a loud sneeze. If you are riding on a train and you hear it, you should always hang on an anticipate trouble. Your account says the train went into emergency to get the switch, but just using the independent (engine-only) brake at a very low speed can cause tremendous slack impact.

9

Some engineers were so bad at train-handling that the guys in the caboose would ride with their backs against the leading bulkhead, so that when the slack ran in, they would already be braced against the wall. Of course, that didn’t help them against any non-human objects flying in their direction. And it wasn’t much protection against a slack run-out.

Getting rid of the caboose made the engineer’s job so (relatively) easy…

10

Yeah, FREDs are clamped to the couplers…they can’t fall off!

11

It can also put cars on the ground–Back in 1963, I was on the northbound Pelican in Birmingham, and while we were in the station, a Northern Alabama freight came in from Norris Yard, on its way to Sheffield. The watchman at the L&N crossing, just east of the station, swung the gate over the Southern track suddenly, and the engineer of the NA train hit the independent brake instead of the train brake, causing some cars to be derailed. We could not get past them, and had to back to North Birmingham and take another line over to Woodlawn Jct., where we got back on the main to Chattanooga. There were no injuries that I heard of.

Johnny

12

Yes, they can.

Jeff

13

[quote user=“Kootenay Central”]

When a train of empty cars stops suddenly at a lower speed, say, under 10 MPH, usually from an UDE, Undesired Emergency near the head end, the slack, no matter how little, will bunch rapidly from the now-stopped front of the train towards the rear, which will be still moving.

When all the slack ahead is closed up, the caboose, in effect, hits the stopped portion similar to making a joint on a cut of cars or locomotives which has the air set.

Run into a to-be-scrapped Caboose with units at even a slow speed and see the results!

Think of an automobile with passengers hitting a concrete wall, everything inside keeps moving, the reason for seat belts.

Unlike the interior of a modern auto, a Caboose is FULL of HARD SHARP UNYIELDING objects.

In a real bad jolt the water reservoirs, stove, cupboards etc within a Caboose can get torn loose from their mountings and become missles.

On modern cabooses the cupola windows were metal-framed and ran on rollers in tracks and would SLAM shut like a knife. Pity the Conductor or Tail End Man whose hand was on the window ledge.

In the following head on, the shorter train, to the left, with two units hit the heavy drag with four and full tonnage.

The Caboose on the short train stopped instantly. The Trainman was thrown the length of the caboose and out the front wooden door, sustaining severe head injuries.

I understand the stove came adrift, as well as almost everything else.

Slack action is worse on a train of empties, as the momentum of ‘Loads’ will bulldoze themselves ahead, whereas empties, being lighter, will just stop.

Normal slack action can toss crews from cupolas, but, can often be anticipated by knowing the road, the consist of the train, and, the Engineer.

Yes, a sudden stop can and will kill riders in a Caboose o

14

But it was not always, nor necessarily, poor train handling by an inept (or even an “ept”) engineer. Basically as trains became longer so did the slack distance… That meant that cabooses were getting more of a jerk tug or a slam on short stops thus throwing crew members around and causing more frequent and more serious injuries. Getting rid of the caboose was necessary to prevent these injuries but it also was a savings on rostering an extra car and toting around the extra weight. Which raises an interesting question: if trains were shorter would it be propitious to have a caboose so that there were real “eyes” at both the head and hind ends of trains, that safety would be imporved in that matter, and that hind end work could be done without extra time and extra manpower (and owned or leased units) driving taxis or walking mile long trains?

15

Seems like we discussed slack action a while back, but I’m not sure where.

Just to sate my curiosity, I punched a few numbers into the ol’ calculator and found that with a mere 3" of slack between cars (and it’s more than that) some 25 feet of slack potentially exists in a 100 car train.

Edit: Here it is.

16

Given the slack problem I’m surprised that cabeese weren’t outfited with seatbelts that would be required to be worn whenever the train is in motion. Was there a need for the tail end crew to be walking about while the train was in motion? Also highback seats would have been a good idea. Sometimes it seems as if nobody gave any thought to safety until about five years ago.

17

Just a guess, but had the caboose remained as the end of train facility, no doubt the FRA would have mandated safety improvements such as with the anchoring of stoves, tables and seats. Figure seats belts along with that.

18

Well, they and the railroads had 150 years to come up with those ideas yet did not for some reason…there’s no reason to believe that enlightenment would have occurred over the last 20 years. And equally surprising (to me)…it wasn’t something that was pushed by the unions.

19

Some roads did equip their cabooses with seat belts and included orders to USE them in the employee timetable, safety book of rules, etc.

20

If I recall correctly, the publicity releases and advertsing for the last series of cabooses - like those with the “extended vision” cupolas by International Car Co. - touted that they did have seat belts intstalled. I know it wasn’t done “back in the day”, but by the end of cabooses, seatbelts weren’t unheard of, either. I think if you get into the details, they also mentioned that the stoves were well-secured, corners were rounded, etc.

  • Paul North.