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in the movie runaway train, the actors jon voight and eric roberts stopped the engines by seperating the jumper cables. in the nyc incident the electrician went from engine to engine and closed the eng run switch. also did anybody notice the model board in the movie? there were two or more tracks and names like clark st jct. maybe thay filmed it at the chicago transit authority.
and in every movie that everyone tries to stop a run-a-way train they are trying to apply air or shutting down engines and all sorts of stuff, but i have never seen anyone apply the hand brakes.
Check out the 1973 movie Runaway! where a ski train in Colorado (they used D&RGW’s ski train relettered for Sierra Pacific) loses its brakes. They tried using the train brakes, which were possibly blocked with ice. They then tried the emergency brake in the locomotive cab, the conductor’s emergency brake in the cars, and then the hand brakes. The movie’s up on YouTube.
Kevin
Great old TV movie. Ben Johnson puts in a outstanding performance as the Cool-as-Ice engineer of the runaway.
For some more details on the movie Runaway!, see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070615/combined
I remember BN put out a rather huffy press release back then - it may even have been reprinted in Trains - to the effect that it was offended by such a preposterous plot premise. [;)] [Ah - literally]
- Paul North
Personally, I thought that the movie was pretty well made for a TV movie. They had the crew calling out signals, brought up the different brakes to try to stop the train (including checking the air hoses), and had a rather realistic dispatcher’s board.
Kevin
A runaway is basicaly any train that’s out of control weather who’s on it. The more recent CN in BC that killed some on board crew members was called a runaway.
Couldn’t he also have put the throttles in idle or stop? Switched to dynamic braking, if so equiped? Pulled the fuses? The hand brake as mentioned? At least he might have had some fun blasting the air horn as warning. I may also be looking at this as someone with enough general interest to download operating manuals for trains, not just the average person who thinks trains are big noisey long things that just hold up traffic. I could never say that about a train.
For one thing, according to the story, he’d never operated a locomotive so the controls were quite foreign to him. If I remember right, he said that the levers were oriented differently in the lead locomotive. He found the switches for shutting down the locomotives, and, at the time, it made the most sense for him.
What I’m wondering is how the engineer got off the locomotives. The guy who had been trapped on the locomotives said that they’d been backing up and then suddenly went forward, which sounds like something went wrong.
Kevin
Dad used to talk about a runaway boxcar getting away from a Frisco crew that was switching near St. Clair, MO. They had to chase it with their engine through quite a few grade crossings until they were finally able to catch it. The scary part was the boxcar did not trigger the signals at the crossings, at that time only an engine had the capability to do that. Luckily no one was hurt and that’s why even today, I still slow down at crossings and look both ways to make sure nothing is coming before I start across. Maybe it doesn’t work that way today, but I’m still not taking any chances.
There’s an episode of Rescue 911 in the first season where two runaway boxcars enter a crossing in Michigan and T-bone a car in front of a state trooper, pushing the car sideways down the tracks. The trooper turned around, sped down the street parallelling the track, got ahead of the boxcars, and then jumped on and used the brake wheel to stop them just before they hit a bridge. Last I checked, the episode was still on YouTube.
Kevin
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Cool post! Nice pics! Great info! Thanks!!! I’m surprised the “Frank Slide” wasn’t mentioned.
SP 4449, westbound, stopped in Shelby last Saturday. Roared out of here. Even the “chasers” couldn’t keep up at 70 mph! Of course, they weren’t observing the 70 mph speed limit on US 2. Loons, all of them! I have never seen anything get our of our ancient (Milk, at one time) river bottom so fast, with fourteen cars in tow to boot!!!
In about 1981 on the east slope of the Crowsnest Pass at Coleman, AB, there was another train runaway.
The WB train was set off at the former station site, and the engines ran light WB to the switch to the spur leading up to the coal mine to lift loads. The spur runs back east, above and south of town. While the engines were climbing the grade EB on the spur the crew was able to look across and down to the old station site (about a mile as the crow flies) and saw their train leave town EB with the caboose leading.
The crew slammed on the brakes, roared back WB to the switch to the mainline, threw it, and lit out EB after the train. They slowed down just enough so a trainman was able to jump off at the station site without bouncing and use a dispatchers phone that was still connected to call the dispatcher.
The dispatcher called the RCMP, and they began to notify other detachments and they did what they could to block crossings. This “train” got up to a terrific speed what with the downgrade and the prevailing winds in the area. It got out of the curvy bits in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and onto some straight track on the prairies. There were only a few more curves before it could roll across the Lethbridge Viaduct (5320’ long X 315’ high) and into the city of Lethbridge.
My father was dispatching the East end while this was going on, on the South end, as it was called. The office came to as close a complete stop as it could while this was going on for twenty minutes or more, and there was nothing they could do as this line was not CTC, and there were no Agents or Operators as they had been removed years earlier. They were very afraid it was going to crash into some unsuspecting family at a grade crossing.
About track detection: I worked on the railroad in the late 40s, early 50s. ANY car can and should be able to trip the track occupany circuitry. However, rust can be a big hindrance.
I have worked towers where the rust on the tracks crossing our was thick from lack of use. Sometimes their engine would have crossed the diamonds before the track occupany light on the board would come on, the following train cars having worn away the rust.
The train was still ‘safe’ because the signal could not be taken away and the route through the interlocking plant changed without ‘running down the clock’, usually a 10 minute delay. And by that time the train would be gone.
Art
From the Railroad Gazette:
November 1889
8th, forenoon, on Pennsylvania, the last eight cars of a freight train broke loose at the top of a steep grade in passing through the tunnel near Gallatzin, Pa., leaving only the conductor and one brakeman to control the speed of the forward portion, 30 cars. There had been a heavy rain, making the rails slippery, and the speed of the train could not be controlled and rapidly increased to over 60 miles an hour. A work train ahead of it was overtaken at Scotch Knob, knocking off the caboose and one tool car. The engineer of the work train put on the steam and ran ahead a considerable distance, but at McGarveys the runaway again dashed into it, knocking off another car at the rear of the work train. A mile further on a third collision occurred, this time wrecking two more cars of the work train and derailing a car of the freight, bringing bot
Cool post! Nice pics! Great info! Thanks!!!
another PRR runaway happened in the early sixties on the Phila div. a freight train stopped on no. 2 track at Overbrook interlocking. the crew made a cut of cars to take to the 52nd receiving yd. after the crew made the cut and were proceeding to the yd the rear end of the train which consisted of over 100 cars began to roll. the cars struck a yd shifter at 52nd st. the crew on the shifter bailed out and the runaway pushing the shifter with brakes locked proceed toward zoo. at zoo the runaway was routed to the high line (west phila elevated track) at arsenal interlocking it was routed to the west chester branch which is an ascending grade where it came to a stop.
What about the runaway in downtown St.Paul earlier this decade? I still have not seen any pictures from that incedent.