This is very vague and not enough info to get a fix on it, but here goes. I grew up in McAlester, OK where the Katy crossed the RI Choctaw div. I was six years old when WW II started. Sometime during the war, my father (who worked on the Katy) took me to a site of a freight derailment, seems that it was East of McA in a sort of out of the way place on a curve. I am reasonably sure it was on the RI. I remember that the power was steam; loco and rolling stock on their sides being dragged up toward the track. And a lot of people looking like they were guarding the area. I do not remember any mention of crew injuries. My most vivid memory was of dead cattle AND horses being piled up and burned and commodities such as butter, flour, and the like being piled up and either burned or buried. I remember because these items were rationed at the time. I asked my dad why couldn’t people go retrieve it since they were throwing it away ( I seem to remember minimal damage to a good portion of it). He said something like “it could not be given out fairly so it would go to no one”. Probably a lot of such wrecks with only the worst ones on record. I can’t find anything that could be this one.
Northtowne (Yes, I am an old man)
ICC accident reports (seemingly not a complete set) can be found online. I looked around but could not find a Rock Island derailment in your time frame that resembled what you are talking about. You mighth have better luck
But note that most of these reports involve fatalities or passenger trains so it might be that a mere property damage derailment does not make the list.
http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/
This is the sort of inquiry where railroad historical societies are often the best resource
http://www.rits.org/home.html
Dave Nelson
Northtowne:
I kind of checked out a number of years forward and backward from 1942 looking for the wreck you described on the link Dave nelson provided, and the Rock and the KATY both had their share of equipment strewn about their properties and without question, many were lost in the various wrecks; I was unable to find anything within the area of McAlester,OK on either road.
Tailwayman described a similar set of circumstances on another Thread recently on this Forum. He mentioned that at times there are accidents in which minimal damage to the equipment and railroad are done, and no one is killed or hurt, so there is no need to call a formal investigation under the auspices of some Federal or State sponsored agency. This might be an explanation of why there is no formal investigation noted in the DOT archives.
Wreck clearance is a fast, and dirty business with the total object to get the line back in operation. Some years back there was a wreck on the IC’s main line by Southaven, Miss (just south of the Memphis,Tn. aea). I remember seeing several cars of wihikey and at least one car of rifels and shotguns burried under a bean field, after the big side boom Cats were walked back and forth over the remains of the cars and their cargoes.
Over in Arkansas there was a train of autoracks on a MoPac train loaded with new cars that was scattered over the landscape. Hulcher’s guys pulled all the autos out of the damaged cars and after windrowing the cars they crushed them and buried the automobiles adjacent to the ROW. We were told that simplified the handling of the loss by making it a total cargo loss; no worry about fixing scratches,and