There has beed many days of both scheduled and unscheduled track work WASH - Perryville effecting mainly MARC. Another one today Friday 12th.
MARC Service Alert alert@mtamarylandalerts.com
To:Maryland MTA Alerts Subscriber
Jul 12 at 10:14 AM
[quote user=“blue streak 1”]
There has beed many days of both scheduled and unscheduled track work WASH - Perryville effecting mainly MARC. Another one today Friday 12th.
MARC Service Alert alert@mtamarylandalerts.com
To:Maryland MTA Alerts Subscriber
Jul 12 at 10:14 AM
I didn’t know Herzog had Difco side dumps.
I’ll bite: how did they manage to get the effect of side-dumping with conventional cars. No stringlining excuse in that location!
Without being on the ground and investigating the signs and marks and other clues that derailments leave, I don’t have any idea how Amtrak managed to pull this one off.
“Yes but,” I heard the member formerly known as Bucyrus say, “if they pulled it off doesn’t that imply a string line-type derailment? As opposed to pushing it off…”
Still ranks as my vote for pun of the year.[tup]
+1 In the unintended humor category.
I’ve heard of ballast trains that dumped too much ballast (gate stuck open or similar) and it caused a derailment.
Or if the doors didn’t open on one side of the car, turning it into an unbalanced load. Just like the little cartoon painted on the ends of centrebeam flats.
Those Difco air dumps are prone to tipping over too, gotta be careful and raise them slowly, and wait until some of the load has poured out before raising it completely.
Cars pictured in the article are not Difco side dumps. They are Herzog bottom dumps.
Too many people seem to have missed the wicked humor in Zug’s post that said ‘I didn’t know Herzog used Difcos’…
I also do not see any string in that photo either.
Believe me, I am very familiar with the differences between the different types of ballast cars. Switched way too many of them on way too many worktrains. The first part of my post (bolded here) referred to the bottom-dump Herzog cars.
The bit about air-dumps refers to other incidents I have heard about, but thankfully not taken part in.
Or perhaps this derailment had nothing to do with the cars, and they found a spot of bad track that should have been made a higher priority on the to-do list.