I can’t believe none of you are commenting upon the most hilarious line of the show!!!
I can’t remember it word-for-word but when the rail fan said, “you just know you are alive and feel like a man when you see those beauties coming around the bend,” I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my bed.
My wife is having a field day over this. She keeps telling me “well do you feel like a man when you see those beauties coming around the bend you big stud.”
The fact that the train historian was a geek who couldn’t get a date made it all the more hilarious. Apparently Math geek ranks above train geek on the scale of being able to get a date.
OK I just watched the show. I loved the railfan remark who supply’s the cops with the video of the van.
The reference to a Cajon Pass accident is very TRUE. I believed it occurred in 1989. The very quick version is the SPRR train was carrying a commodity to make glass. It orginated in Mojave destined for Colton then to LAX to be exported. One of he engines brakes on the consist was not operating when it left Mojave. But because the reported weight on the train was not so high the engineer decided to proceed. However, the clerk at Mojave had reported the incorrect weight. When they reached Palmdale 2 more locos were added to the rear end & one of those loco’s brakes also was inoperative. So once the train reached the summit & began the downhill all hell broke lose as the train became uncontrollable & became a runaway & finally derailed at Duffy St. in San Bernardino. You can contact the A & E network as they ran a program on it. You can also probably look it up on the NTSB web site. [;)]
This episode has done more to erode the publics confindence in railfans then it has done the railroads. Railroads for the most part are out of sight out of mind. The reason for this is that railroads are wholesale rather then retail transportation. The public for the most part has not shipped by rail since REA.
UPS does most of that now.(Althougt it goes by rail the public does not see that)
The train that hit the bus in beginning of the show, would it have been realistic to try to fix the sander when it’s that close to hitting the bus? I didn’t think so.
Rear brakes? So what! Everybody knows that the FRONT brakes provide almost all the breaking power. Duh!
Isn’t there a bucket of sand in the nose? If the sanders break down, the conductor can spread sand from the front platform. Stop that train on a dime.[D)][D)][D)]
I enjoyed the show. Of course we “experts” can always find things in shows to nit-pick about, but the show’s writers did at least some backgound research. I didn’t expect a documentary - but I did wi***hey use some more math instead of just figuring out a cross number puzzle.
My real job is an engineer in the oil and gas business. When I see a show about an oil field I laugh as most of what is there is hype and not the real world. My limited knowledge of railroads says the same thing about what I see on the idiot box.