OK, so it is a towboat instead of a train, but those of us with an interest in the transportation industry might be able to appreciate this: http://www.dancetc.com/towboat.html
There’s more information on it here http://koti.mbnet.fi/~soldier/index.html Including why it came back up. Apparently she had a full fuel tank so the weight couldn’t shift, and was well ballasted!
The MV Cahaba pulled thhis trick while the lower Tenn-Tom Waterway was in flood in 79.
Had she gone straight in, it would have cleaned her superstructure off, and probably sunk her, but the sideways action and ballasted as she was with fuel, the only damage was superficial to the vessel and stunning to the crew’s nerves.
I seem to recollect that Warrior & Gulf was the operator of the tow boat and barges that struck the Mobile River bridge causing the derailment of the Sunset Limited near Mobile which killed 49 passengers and crew…
The towboats on the Illinois River and in the Chicago area have retractable pilothouses for low bridges but this is sure a different way of getting under a low bridge.
Check the pics again , its a drawbridge, and the river was in flood stage so it was running very high. I saw the video of this event right after it happened a few years ago during one of the bad floods in the mid-west, complete with interviews with the crew, but if I remember right the power to the bridge was out due to the flooding, so they couldnt raise it, and the current was so bad the tug couldn’t stop . One bad + another bad = one terrible day for the boat owner.
Interview with the boat captain went something like this…
“Well the bridge wasnt raising so we tried to slow down, but we didnt, so we cut the barge and went full re-verse and we still didnt slow, I yelled ‘hold on’ and we hit, when we started to roll under I knew this was going to be a ride!”
Hey, there’s no way to fit my truck into the garage my father added to a house we once lived in when I was young. Today’s towboats are bigger and badder than the ones that were probably on the river when the bridge was erected. The builders of the bridge probably also figured that people would be smart enough to stay off the river when it was at flood stage.
Based on other comments, had the draw section gone up in time, we wouldn’t even be talking about it…