I know this is a pretty bad question but…
Which railroad has the most derailments? Of all time, not just todays railroads.
Also, was the MILW pretty good about having less derailments?
I worked a wrecker off of the extra board out of St Maries on the Milw that went to work at Avery W/ 2 crews working 12 hrs on, 12 hours off. It was November of (I think) 1978 and really wierd weather wise as it would freeze hard every night and then thaw during the day. We would no sooner open a hole and get trains moving than we’d get word off yet another deraiment due to frost heaves. It’s no exageration that we were averaging a derailment a day for most of the month. As an added (insult to injury?) feature the engine we were using was the 150 all prettied up in Centenial paint and hidden away in the wilds between Avery and Alberton!
The O&W had a really lousy record owing to poor roadbed, poor operations and some pretty hard drinking train crews.
what is your defintion of a derailment? you talking the kind that make CNN…or just anytime a wheel hits the dirt… becouse railroads have hunderseds of derailments a day across the country to this day… its not that uncommon for at some place in the rail network to have a car derail for any number of reasons… you just dont hear about them becoues they are very minnor… just the wheels hitting dirt…not the stack-em up pileups where the news choppers are flying over and CNN has it running across its ticker…
csx engineer
I heard WSOR has a bunch of minor ones because SOMEONE doesn’t fund their track projects. They are still running on really light rail, which can’t support the newer heavier cars.
My model railroad used to have a lot of derailments…[:D]
I sure hope you are referring to the owner of the WSOR and not the taxpayers!
lol. WSOR had that big one a while back. I think a mixed freight with 2 SD40-2s crashed in downtown Waukesha.
The one in Waukesha was in 2006. The lead unit was WSOR 4025, the 25th anniversary unit (me[:(]) and they had to repair the nose of it. However there was a bigger derailment in Edgerton this february. It was led by a GCFX SD40-2 and a WSOR GP38. link:
Well my old favorite had a ton in its later days. I had a video that showed the final days of the Rock as Reported by a local reporter. One of the news items of the day was the Milwaukee dropping them on the ground along River Drive in Davenport.No big deal really everything stayed upright just not on the rails.
We have a lot it seems in the yard. Cars banging to hard off the hump ( yes that happens)switch crews pulling a cut with skates under the wheels ( they dont go through frogs that well)very poor track in some parts of the yard ( we dated the old TOFC tracks to being almost original west yard tracks dating older than one of our guys who has 30 plus years here).
Amtrak went off in Ft Mad but I never saw it on CNN this was last month IIRC.
Guilford dropped a few cars on the ground in Lowell yesterday; I heard it on my friend’s scanner while railfanning in Ayer, MA.
While we were there, MBTA had a signal failure![:D] An inbound train came into the station, only to find the signal guarding the East leg of the wye dark![:-^]
I agree with you that the taxpayers shouldn’t pick up the tab to upgrade the tracks. But most of the projects that WSOR works on are funded using 20% WSOR money and 80% state money.
Do you know the guy that was driving 4025… or was it you?
Um, that could be his favorite locomotive… I don’t want to assume it’s him and then ask a bunch of questions.
Most track projects are funded in that manner since the State of Wisconsin owns most of the trackage on which WSOR runs.
WSOR 4025 was the second unit. 4006 was leading, and 4004 was third. The 4025 caught the switch on the south end of the Waukesha yard and tore up the lead, and plowed into some cars that were sitting in the yard. In the sudden stop, 4004 dug down pretty good, and the rest of the train kept coming in, helped by the loaded cars on the rear. The crew wasn’t hurt.
The State of Wisconsin owns the track, and the property underneath, on the former MILW trackage. Other track is leased from the UP. Lately the state has been giving more money to help fix their assets. The state also pays for highway work, on highways that it owns.