http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VuIrI36oQU
Priceless![alien]
That’s what the newspaper called them, too. It was really two container flats. The explosion was the LP tank for the cab heater on the crane they destroyed. I was told there were parts on the trees.
The cars ran about eight miles, through at least one, and possibly two derails, and through a closed trailing switch. Speeds were estimated as high as 60, although a curve they passed through just before the collision with the track gang’s equipment took off enough speed that the collision was estimated to have been at about 40. There is a crossing just past the collision point, and a 10 MPH curve another quarter mile beyond the crossing.
It was an exciting morning…
Larry:
Thanks for the information. I just wondering who’s at fault? Does this happen alot in the industry?
Yes it does! The news industry gets a lot of facts wrong, even those that don’t involve railroads.[;)]
I don’t know that it happens a lot.
In this particular case it was a combination of factors. A switch coincidentally set so the cars could run toward the mainline instead of into another stub yard - where they would have stopped, a handbrake not set, the cars at the top of a hill (if they had been one car length in the other direction, they wouldn’t have run away, they would have simply rolled inches into the next car on the siding), personnel loading the cars who weren’t familiar with them (I’ve been told that someone heroically jumped onto the cars when they started rolling, but didn’t know how to set the handbrake).
There were a few other things, too, but I’m not sure if they’re for public consumption.
It’s said that most rules on the railroad are written in blood. While the only injury as the result of this incident was a twisted ankle (a track worker beating feet out of the way - although they did have several minutes warning), a number of “new” procedures were in place the next day at the place from which the cars ran away.
As an aside - if the track gang hadn’t been there to stop the cars, and assuming the cars made it across the adjacent crossing without hitting a vehicle, they would have been into that 10mph curve. If they made it through there (and being container flats, that’s not impossible, even at 40 mph) they would have been in something of a ‘bowl’. This would have produced the somewhat amusing effect of the two cars rolling back and forth (and across another crossing) several times, until friction overtook gravity and they stopped… The looks on the motorists’ faces as the cars rolled through the crossing, several times, would have been priceless.
Were these the cars that escaped from Fort Drum?
Larry,
I was looking at one of your earlier posts and was hoping you could explain to this novice what a “cut lever” is? I’m assuming it has something to do with uncoupling cars?
Wayne
Eric - That’s them.
Wayne - The uncoupling lever is same as the cut lever. Just another example of railroad slang.