I got a new book, Images of rail / South Dakota Railroads. One chapter is photos of derailments. The book shows photos of derailments in eastern South Dakota. From 1907-1916, The Milwaukee Road averaged 2.1 major derailments per year. The Chicago & Northwestern averaged 1.5 per year. This is really unscientific, and based only on the derailments that warrented an entry into this particular book.
In general, how prevalent were derailments back then?
The calculation must exclude simple derailments with split switches, broken rails, derails (gravity works) with a wheel or two on the ground. Funky recording?
Everything revolves around what the definition of ‘Major’ is.
The present day FRA has a monetary standard of what constitutes a ‘reportable’ derailment. In the investigation and clearance of derailments that figure gets ‘played’ with among Operations, MofW, Car Dept. officials in many cases to keep a derailment from being ‘reportable’.
Well, not scientific at all. It’s a pseudo-historical book of photos from that era. There’s a chapter showing the major train wrecks- or at least the ones the author had photos of. Reading trough, it made me wonder if major train wrecks in that era were a fairly common occurrence.
DOT has the reported accidents from 1911 on. The new form of search makes it difficult to view accidents ‘through the years’.
When I first read your thread title, the first thought that crossed my mind was “I wonder if he means trainwrecks, or just simple derailments”?
A lot of the 19th and early 20th century trainwrecks that I’ve read about seem to revolve around lack of signaling/dark territory.
And plain old human error.
The experts certainly agree with you. Here is one that the locals still talk about:
Which raises a point I wanted to mention in my earlier post, but didn’t have the breadth-of-Topic to be confident with. That being that “extras” added to the normal schedule, are particularly prone to inciting disaster, because they disrupt the status quo, and interfere with what I’ll call “the everyday tedium”…
Here’s another link with interurban related wreck photos, some rather impressive
To me those numbers seem surprisingly LOW.
Remember, it was a lot easier to cover up minor derailments and incidents back then, and it was expected that crews would try to clean up their own messes. Why else did ever engine and caboose carry rerailers?
I’ll bet most minor derailments never got reported, so they would not show up in those stastics.
Transport Canada changed the definition of a derailment some years ago, any one wheel not touching the rail head counts. Thats when the rerailers got taken away (I wish we still had them, tie plates and junk wood just ain’t the same).
I would say that the era of the highest quantity, and the most deadly train wrecks was prior to 1900, and more in the 1870-1900 era. The Railroad Gazette used to run a monthly list of train accidents in the U.S. It seems that the railroads had developed to the point where the speed and weight of trains suddenly got ahead of the quality of the physical plant.
The Railroad Gazette listings that showed that eveything that could possibly go wrong, often did so. Many have that quality of “you can’t make this up.”
Back then? There are derailments everyday. Most are just that, a derailment where a few cars have had wheels come off the rail. Usually happens in yards, often involving switches not properly lined. Does not make the news.
Major derailments, more likely described as a train wreck, happen less often. Can be either human or mechanical/track caused.
How do you have one tenth of a major derailment?
Jeff
Well sometimes (thru confirmation bias I supposed*) it seems train ‘derailments’ have become pretty darn common - for example NS 16T near Charlestown, West Virginia on 25 Jan 2021, and CSX in Cincinnati, Ohio on 24 Jan 2021. I put derailment in quotes because while wheels indeed came off the tracks, so did the freight cars themselves, laying on their sides or in the case of the CSX one, a covered hopper piled up on the locomotive - IMO, these kinds of incidents should qualify as train wrecks as some of those freight cars seemed only good for salvage.
*OK, thanks to smart phones, digital video camera, drones and so on it is pretty easy to record and share these incidents, and for many to view the results. Maybe per…train mile?..incidents are really down from 50 or 100 years ago, but it does seem worse due to it being more…ugh, I hate the term, but ‘In You Face’.
Was working B&O’s Locust Point yard in Baltimore when the export of grain to Russia went from zero to all hands on deck at the flip of a switch. Locust Point served the Indiana Grain export grain pier. The trackage at Locust Point had been put in place in the very early 20th Century and had been in place for approximately 75 years at the time the ‘switch’ got flipped and unit train loads of grain descened upon Locust Point. 75 year old 90 pound and less rail coupled with 100 ton capacity high cube covered hopper grain cars were the recipe for major problems if no disaster.
In the 28 days of February 1975, within the confines of Locust Point there were 59 derailments ranging from one wheel to 20 cars, most all of the derailments involved loaded grain cars. Shattered rail and rotten ties all over the place as well as spilled grain that would later rot and smell up the area. All you can do is keep rerailing and repairing and get ready for the next unit train and its issues. Truly a miserable tour of duty.
That Summer both the System tie gang and the system rail gang came through and installed thousands of new ties and relay welded rail on all the normal grain handling track.
The engineer wasn’t good enough to have a full-on, total derailment?[:-,]
The numbers are averages- number of wrecks mentioned divided by number of years covered. The guys that were better than average at derailing probably had higher numbers.[:-^]
How bad was the rat problem there? And did any of them get drunk on the rotten grain?
In some areas when you walked - the ground acted like you were walking on a sponge - account of all the burrows underneath the ground.
When grain was spilled, an outfit with a industrial strength vacuum truck would be called to pick up all that was possible to pick up - however that was never 100% of what was on the ground. Wheat and corn weren’t ‘too bad’ as they rotted, soybeans were another story entirely.
Recall one of the Car Dept. guys would carry a baseball bat - catch a rat, throw him up by the tail and hit it like you were hitting fugos in baseball practice.
That’s messed up, dude.
This place attracts some messed up people. I’m sure you’ve run into a few, I sure have.
Locust Point at the time was inhabited by Longshoremen and Railroaders with a sprinkling of Procter & Gamble and American Sugar workers. A hard living, hard drinking community with each intersection anchored by a bar on each corner. The East end of the peninsula upon which Locust Point occupys is Fort McHenry where the Star Spangled Banner flew to become the National Anthem from the War of 1812.