What are the strangest derailments you have seen or heard about? I think it was on this site many years ago I saw the picture of the steam locomotive on top of another one like it was driven there.
Inertia is a funny master…it follows the paths for least resistance which present surprising results.
From the Railroad Gazette:
.
.
.
[quote user=“Bucyrus”]
From the Railroad Gazette:
.
.
.
What you’re referring to Boyd is called telescoping and not uncommon in head on but more so in rear end, collisions.
As to my experiences: One morning while driving to work from Apalachin, NY to Owego I heard an EL train coming west but something bothered me about it. When I turned onto the ramp leading to NY17 west off NY434 was facing directly across the Susquehanna River and watched as several rail cars tumbled toward me! Today that ramp is a full bridge across the river and the now single tracked NS Southern Tier Main.
…Upon leaving Bingahmton’s Liberty Street yard, just before crossing the bridge over Route 11, I was aboard a NYSW passenger train headed for the Marathon, NY Maple Festival back in the 80s. I was in one of the last two cars, the domes, when I realized the rails were too bumpy and the train stopped abruptly. The trucks of the last car apparently picked the switch and all remained upright with no injuries. Moved the passengers forward to cramped quarters, uncoupled the two cars, and left a little late.
Common story on many roads and in many decades is a late night train through very remote areas. Train goes into emergency, crew walks the train and finds everything on the rails but there is an unattached hose between two cars. Couple it up and move on with no apparent problem but upon arrival at the destination it is discovered they are minus one car. Car is found off to the side of the right of way by a later train or in daylight or by trackmen or whatever. What happened? Supposedly the car jumped the tracks out of the train setting the brakes. Two parts of the train run together with the couplers locking. Too dark for the crew to have seen to the side…and probably the stopping spot further ahead of the actual supposed derailed car. An engineer freind of mine reported it had happened to him in the Grand Canyon of PA, there was a report in one of the magazines about that h
On the Reading’s Newberry-Reading Catawissa main the crew came up a car short. Apparently a mid-train covered hopper derailed on a downgrade fill and momentum recoupled the train. Emergency - reconnect the air --proceed - scratch heads at Reading yard office.
From James L. Holton’s “The Reading Railroad the Twentieth Century” with a little interpretation as he is unclear as to location and date (between 1968 and 1970?).
Ah, the sad demise of the Catawissa with it’s growling FT’s, once the pride of the Reading. and NYC’s gateway to Philly.
RIX
“Urban legend”, I think. On a slow-moving train, the derailed car won’t go that far, and would still be ‘in the gage’ of the track and tearing it up. In a fast-moving train, any impact or forces that would throw a car that far out will also derail one or more other cars on either side of it. It might have happened once or twice with really light cars - such as a flat or a gondola - in the middle of heavily loaded cars, but not that often.
On the other hand, there have been several documented instances of cars - and even locomotives - derailing and then rerailing from a short distance to several miles farther on, such as at either a trailing-point switch, a road crossing, a center-guardrail at a bridge, etc. A couple years ago there was an article in Trains about an early BNSF Detroit- St. Louis RoadRailer that derailed and re-railed itself a couple times at night while approaching the Mississippi River bridge in southeastern Illinois, as I recall.
- Paul North.
I recall a story in Trains about a derail/rerail that was discovered only because it had clipped some track control component, causing it to fail. A dispatcher or CTC operator reported the problem because they weren’t getting some indication they should have.
I’m sure the track forces would have found the damage eventually, but if the car hadn’t hit that one item, that’s exactly how it would have been discovered.
About thirty five years ago a section foreman and crew were patrolling their section on a Fairmont motor car when they passed the West switch at Mc Gillivray, B.C.
In the clear, derailed, in the siding was a lone four-wheel roller-bearing freight car truck.
He got on the Magneto Phone at the siding, called up the station at the Crow on the Divide, Three Long Rings, and reported same as from an Eastward train.
There was an East in the yard awaiting crew rest and someone went out to check the train.
One empty tank car was missing a truck and was held up at that end by the couplers to the tank car coupled next.
No big pileup with tanks.
A better ending than could have otherwise occurred.
Train passed that switch in the dark and the tail end crew did not notice anything amiss re sparks.
This was entering the horseshoe curve Eastbound at that location and is briefly 2%.
Back in the Sixties, CPR had the track bolts in the joint bars inserted with the nuts all on the outside, a CPR spotting feature, as CNR had them staggered in-out.
One could drive up to a crossing at grade and tell by the bolt pattern whose track it was back in those simpler times.
In early 1969, one of those then-newish 100-ton cylindrical roller bearing covered hoppers harmonic-rolled one set of wheels off the track between Mayook and Tokay on the-then cinder and sand ballast from the days of 2-8-0s.
( In all fairness, this portion of the sub was abandoned in 1970 and maintenance had slid. Some of the rail and the turnouts were still 85 lb. and a message from the Supt. was required with the Train Orders to operate 5 small units, or twenty driving axles. )
Anyway, a wheel flange sliced off many the nuts on one rail for miles, leaving some of the joint bars virtually boltless.
Tore out many of the farm crossing planks in addition.
Soon after, CPR emulated CNR in that regard and staggered the bolt pattern on new work or r
That was likely the BNSF RoadRailer acccount that I mentioned above - it ran over and damaged a power switch machine so that it would not return a proper indication when the Dispatcher tried to operate/ throw it to the opposite position.
- Paul North.
Which is exactly why the staggered inside-outside bolt pattern was adopted - I’m surprised that CPR held onto the all-on-one-side pattern for so long. Thanks for that real-life story to corroborate the theory, which otherwise was based on events long ago in the mists of time.
- Paul North.
I was in the Santa Clara,California tower watching an H12-44 doing some switching. One boxcar would not couple no how hard the engineer tried. Finally the brakeman signaled the engineer to back up. He came back so hard the the car jumped up and just rolled on its side with a tremendous crash. The yardmaster came on the radio said he heard a crsah an wanted to know what happended. When he was told he use language that wouyld make a sailor turn grren. The operator and I laughed so hard we thought were going to wet our pants.
The yardmaster had to explain to the trainmaster why he needed the big hook from the Bayshore yard. The engineer was suspended for 30 days. Strange to see a car roll over instead of just derailing.
I’ve seen some lulus, but the strangest derailment I can think of was one that I didn’t see.
We were humping a train that included a large block of gondolas for somewhere on the back lead (presumably headed for Sterling). They were loads, so we were shoving them over (otherwise this whole big block would have had to be cut apart into pairs, per instructions). I set my retarders to keep the speed under control, and kicked back. All of a sudden Henry was yelling from Tower B to stop shoving. I grabbed my retarders to help them stop, but didn’t know what was going on. Henry said that one of the gons was on the ground, but I couldn’t see it. The RCO, who was on the point, walked back, and found nothing on the ground. However, there were marks on the rails and by the rails that suggested that something had, indeed, derailed and rerailed. A cut was made, and the suspect area was opened up and inspected before things resumed. I can’t recall whether anything needed to be done, or whether one of my switches had been involved (it worked fine as soon as the cars were clear of it).
Might the retarder ‘beams’ have pushed sideways hard enough to re-rail the errant car ?
No, Paul, this happened well outside of the retarders (below mine, above his). My lowest switch might have been involved; as I said, I can’t remember. I do know that I had a good switch indication on both the board and ground, unlikely if the switch had been picked. (I knew I wasn’t in trouble, because the presence detector would prevent the switch from throwing under a car even if I had bumped the toggle.)
We did have quite a bit of trouble with the presence detector on that switch for some time after this incident, so it’s likely that wheels on the ground might have moved the
Here is a classic telescope wreck where one train ran into the rear of another:
http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/wrk_rutland1.jpg
Here is one like Boyd described. This happened on many occasions:
A reliable contact forty years ago told me that on the AT&SF a whole train turned over the rail underneath it! That must have been fun to upright the rail so they could re-rail the train!
From the Railroad Gazette:
February 1896
12th, 3 a.m., on New York & New England, near Bristol, Conn., an eastbound train broke apart in two places and the three sections continued running for a mile or two when the third section ran into the second, derailing 4 cars; some of the forward cars kept running, however, after going some distance a part of them were derailed by a piece of timber falling on the track; some of the foremost cars still kept on and ran into the forward section of the train, derailing three more.
Indeed.
However, for those of you that believe those stories (which I think are told to most new-hires just to test their gullibility), I have some prime real estate to sell you at a bargain price–I’ll even include a customized astrology chart and some dowsing rods.