We had a similar incident except the 20 ton open hit stops and ejected most of the load clean across the road into the pub car park opposite. I beleieve that very little of it found its way back into the wagon.
If shooting out the end counts as a derail…
does this…
One of my better old bosses worked at one of the rail ferry ports… on his way to lunch one day he noticed that the ferry wasn’t quite hard against the ramp end… to be precise it was a DB boxcar length from where it should be…
His boss at the time took a discreet look at the ticket. It said “empty” so they went to lunch. The legend has it that pieces of that car came up in a dredge bucket a few years later…
There are photos from some years back of a loco that rolled out of some yard or other onto the approach ramp of a motorway. I reckon that it was just an early attempt to get delivered the way most railway stock is delivered these days… by road… that’s crazy! A 60’ tankcar was not designed to go round the local streets where I live. What’s really nuts is that the works has a fully signalled rail access that they don’t seem to use at all.
you may have two of the rerailers on an engine, and you place them ahead of the derailed wheel in the direction your going to push the car, pretty much right next to the rail, maybe spiked down, or secured well enough it wont slide. The loco will push/pull the car over the rerailer with maybe some help of the train crew trying to nudge the truck back. But the concept it just as similar as our hobby rerailers are. Quite often I would get a derailed car and it would rerail at a turnout . Yay!!!
I recall an incident when I was a member at the Little River Railroad, the smitely little 4-6-2 was switching cars, long passenger cars and a side track had a pronounced dip in track height. This was just enough for a passenger car’s coupler to rise and decouple. I was trackside and noticed this happenned. Other members saw this and it was a scramble to stop the car, there was little 4 wheel speedsters at the end of the track and the passenger car was heading ready for the big smashup. There were pieces of board lumber along the track, the car was not moving fast but fast enough to be a problem. I don’t think it was possible for the engine to speedup and recouple, the knuckles were closed and no time to think. I picked up a board and stuck it in front of one of the passenger car’s wheels and it hit the board, smuckered it a bit and the car slowed to a stop.
There was no derailment, but that was just plain luck. I believe the train break occured because it was going too fast, with too light of cars, over a grade crossing that needed to be flatter in respect to the track on both sides. The leading car’s knuckle slipped under the trailing car’s knuckle and continued on it way leaving the trailing car only connected by the airhose, which disconnected the way it is designed to do and the brakes were applied. Neat that the Westinghouse Brake System worked exactly as it is supposed to, but still a bit scary when I remember that I saw it happen about 20 ft in front of me.
The hook on the bottom is put around the head of the rail.and the frog casting is positioined in front of the rail. The tabs on the bottom of the frog engage the ties to keep it from sliding. Oak bloks and wedges are used to guide the wheels onto the frogs. You can also use a come-along or a chain connected to the rail to slew the trucks to they point back towards the rails.
There are several styles of frog. Some come in “inside” and “outside” versions. The “outside” frogs lift the flanges high enough to pass over the rail. The type that look like a big “Y” can be used inside or outside the rail and are nicknamed “bat-wing” frogs.
It is difficult to visualize from the photo because it is hanging upside down and you are looking at the bottom of it. The “tangs” stickup UP in the photo point down in use and are pressed against the side of a tie to keep it from moving when the wheel starts up the ramp on the side. There is a “wall” on the outside of the ramp that guides the flange of the wheel over the rail so the wheel tread drops onto the rail. Usually have to have two re-railers, one on the outside of the rail on the side the derailed car is and the other on the inside of the rail on the side opposite… gotta get both wheels up on the rails at the same time or you can spread the rails if they are not spiked down really well.
On ther topic of derailments, there is a very good – and amusing – article in this months (Nov '07) Trains magazine about some RoadRailers that derailed and rerailed all by themselves. The subtitle of the article is, “If a RoadRailer trailer derails in the middle of the night and nobody notices, does it still derail?” Check it out.
I worked as a car inspector for Santa Fe from 1940 to 1968 and one derailment that I seen once in a great while was when a new conductor or brakeman switching one plant in particular {refinery} would try to put 64 tank cars into siding that held 63 cars. The tell tale sign was seeing the first car into siding suddenly be not inline with the string of cars ahead of it.That called for all cars ahead of derailed car to be put onto another siding and come in with just the engine, remove the two frogs off of the engine, spike them next to rail and slowly pull the cars back up on to the tracks. Sometimes it took more than one try.
As for wheels being off the rails on freight trains while passing my place of employment. I watched thousands of freight cars go by over the years and the only signs that I had to ever give the conductor, or brakeman, as the caboose went by, was for a hot box or flat wheels. I cannot picture a pair of wheels off the rails on a car for any distance without serious trouble in a train going 50 to 60 m.p.h.