Some good video footage of it happening:
I would have run a LOT further away than that (video-shooting) guy did!!
Yikes.
I would have dropped the camera and ran!
Wow! I’ll bet that railfan videographer now knows exactly how those newsreel cameramen felt in 1937 when they caught the Hindenburg disaster!
Maybe it was foolish, maybe it wasn’t, but I’ve got to give that railfan credit for holding his ground and “…keepin’ 'em rolling!”
And those elementary school kids who’ve got the day off? They’re probably yelling “Thank you Reading and Northern!”
How often do you think it happens that a long train derails very near the end? That seems odd. Maybe THAT train was the last straw for some piece of rail, which let go just before the train had totally cleared?
There was an initial report that an axle failed… of course it did. It wasn’t on the rails anymore!
Anything’s possible, but I’d be very surprised if that’s the case. Reading and Northern’s a class act, everything is well-maintained on that 'road, locomotives, their own rolling stock, roadbed, you name it.
Axles are intended to NEVER be on the rails.
And THAT, boys and girls, is why you should never pull right up to the gates at a crossing!
The cameraman had a bad case of target fixation. I would have been sprinting away as soon as I saw the dust cloud. He is very lucky that a car did not fall over on top of him.
Can someone explain why the news coverage repeatedly mentions ‘removing a locomotive piece by piece?’ I just don’t get it. [D)]
At least they didn’t claim the Conductor was driving the engine.
Apparently they don’t know that newly manufactured plastic is shipped in bulk, as pellets. A “plastic-like substance” indeed!
10 points to the first one to guess the owner of the “DOWX” reporting mark!
It might relate to the severity of the damage, especially if the locomotive is deemed to be a write-off and is being cut up on site.
One was, in fact, tipping over right where he was; it didn’t quite go over.
It’s hard to tell how much of his being ‘close’ was actually zooming in, but there is another important take-home message here: he was apparently happily filming relatively close to the tracks in the opposite direction as the derailing cars were actually approaching him.
I note that at least the sixth car from the end is visibly jerking in the video at the point, just before the crossing, that we have the significantly broken and deformed rail. So I think that it’s likely that the ‘cause’ of this was well forward of the four cars that wound up on the ground. And he had ‘target fixation’ of a different kind, in terms of where he was looking and directing his attention…
I sure as hell don’t see any evidence of a DPU, and the three SD50s were all the way up at the front of the train, I think 20 cars or more ahead of anything even starting to derail.
So, I repeat, what locomotive?
I also think no loco derailed.
There is a loose wheelset seen at 2:00. Whether or not its coming loose from the car caused the derailment, I do not know, but its coming loose probably caused the cars behind it to have severe problems in tracking…
Maybe there were some pig parts that were mistaken for a broken up locomotive?
Good one Johnny!
Oh boy, considering the “pig parts” story and “cutting up the locomotive” in this one I’m sure there’s some veterans of the Golden Age of Journalism from the 1920’s through the 1960’s rolling in their graves.
Wayne
Perhaps, like me, they watched the next video, in which a loco shows up on the rear of the train to pull away the non-derailed cars.
It’s hard to tell which cars are doing which. There was obviously a problem about seven cars from the rear of the train, but the first car with a clearly missing set of wheels isn’t seen until the end of the train. Then the one on the crossing has wheels missing.