Fifteen cars were off the tracks near Lancing Tn this afternoon 3/11. No injury reported or what direction it was heading. WLVT Knoxville had overhead shots of it saying it was close to the hwy62 overpass. Also no hazmat.
Believe that might effect the NS traffic thru Muncie until cleanup is complete…
I don’t understand the fascination with derailments…
Do truck enthusiasts get excited when an 18-wheeler blows a tire? I just don’t get the fascination with things such as this. Putting a few cars on the ground is a routine occurance for any railroad on a daily (or weekly, monthly, whatever) occurance.
A hundred car tank manifest with ethyl-methyl-bad-stuff that flips over and leaks into a stream is a different realm then putting some cars on the ground
Yes, Quentin, if only they had gone off south of Harriman Jct.—but no one can pick the place. Incidentally, my only trip between Harriman Jct. and Knoxville came as the result of a wreck at Riceville, on the A line. I was going back to Bristol from Chattanooga on the Birmingham Special, and we were detoured up the CNO&TP to Oakdale, with a CNO&TP pilot, of course.
GraniteRailroader: “Do truck enthusiasts get excited when an 18-wheeler blows a tire? I just don’t get the fascination with things such as this. Putting a few cars on the ground is a routine occurance for any railroad on a daily (or weekly, monthly, whatever) occurance.”
But, how much traffic is stopped or rerouted because an 18-wheeler has blown a tire? (Assuming that the rig is not spread all over the highway.)
Johnny
Sorry for the interruption of what ever Granite. The blowout on the Rathole involving the NS railcars have been cleaned up enough to open up for rail use at or about 10:00 am this morning . Have a good day.
You’ve never come to dead stop on an interstate because an accident in the other lanes 5 miles ahead of you? Why is traffic in the non-particating lanes affected? Because people are facinated when bad things happen, slow down to get a good look and say a prayer, “glad that wasn’t me”. (rubbernecking)
The only difference when a train is involved, is that it is a lot harder to rubberneck, unless it is double-track.[:-^]
I guess ive been wrong all these years. 15 cars went off the tracks . I always thought it was rails . so its not derailments its detracks.
Glad to hear the site of the wreck has opened for traffic.
“Why railfans are interested in circumstances of a derailment”…I suppose most of us are also interested in the mechanical circumstances of how a railroad functions, with steel wheel on steel rail and all the processes used generally do function quite well most of the time and whenever a derailment or worse happens we wonder just what went wrong and how long will it require to put back in service…and hoping no one is hurt and or worse.
The massive effort to get railcars and engines back on track takes special equipment and can be an interesting project to witness as it happens.
As some of the posts above indicate, it’s not necessarily always mere morbid curiosity, but instead:
-
Back-ups - sometimes literally ! - and the detours that can result from even a minor derailment on a busy main line can lead to some interesting, unusual, more frequent, and usually slower-speed operations on otherwise lightly-used lines, so there’s more opportunity to see and photograph them, esp. in better lighting conditions, or else when they’re finally released to resume running over the orignal track. With the CNOT&P blocked, good grief ! - what did NS do with all those trains, esp. the hot ones ? There must have been some interesting parades over the bypass lines those days !
-
Run-through power is more common now, but it’s also an opportunity to see types and color schemes that wouldn’t otherwise be there. As an extreme example of that, back in the early 1970s (I think), photos were in Trains within a year or so when the Strasburg RR repaired both an Amtrak GG1 (bad bearing ?) and a Penn Central E44 (traction motor seized up ?) by towing them with a steam locomotive ! - from the siding and interchange at Leaman Place to its shop at Straburg, and return - in the middle of the Amish farm country. That will never happen again, unless maybe an AEM-7 goes lame as it passes through Paradise ?
-The less-extreme derailments are often a better and easier opportunity to view the rerailing and repair operations as a learning opportunity - and chat with the crews, as their time allows - without haz-mats and a train scattered all over the landscape. If there’s just a few cars on the ground, the railroad and wrecking crews are under less pressure, there are fewer officials of all kinds around, the emergency responders either have gone home or are just in stand-by mode, no one is worried if you get a little closer to the
Then that is why there is that old saying when you come to a rail crossing–"Gee a train just went by,Why? It left it`s tracks!!! LOL Have a good one everyone.