Not necessarily in the emergency class, but some interesting reading on what can go wrong with an excursion train:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6685

As to early experiences with forest fires and trains, what may be the best known one was the incident that involved a fire that became a fire storm near Hinkley, Minnesota, in 1894:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hinckley_Fire

http://www.seans.com/sunsetweb/hinckley/

http://www.seans.com/sunsetweb/hinckley/history/

From the "Telegraph" page:

John Blair exhibit
I had the good fortune to attend the Governor's Tourism Conference last spring where I met the director of the Minnesota Transportation Museum. During the course of my conversation with him, I found that he was a good friend of the artist who illustrated the book "John Blair and the Great Hinckley Fire" John Blair was the porter on the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad engineered by Jim Root. This was the train that made the famous escape to Skunk Lake. The book is all about the hero, John Blair, who helped people get off the train and into the muddy waters of Skunk Lake. Josephine Nobisso authored the book which has won several awards since its publication. The artist, Ted Rose has rendered the story in beautiful watercolors which were donated to the Minnesota Transportation Museum. We will eventually receive framed prints of all of the watercolors and a new exhibit will be created for the museum.

And a review of the book in question:

http://www.epinions.com/review/John_Bla ... 5953022596

Other material:

http://westerntrips.blogspot.com/2011/0 ... th-no.html

http://www.lakesnwoods.com/HinckleyGallery.htm

http://www.tobies.com/A_History3.htm

Becky, earlier you thought the idea of pulling a locomotive out of a burning enginehouse was, perhaps, "too clever," yet we know of at least one incident where this was done. That episode, as dramatic as it may have been for the people involved, pales when looking at the weird fire storm that hit Hinckley in 1894.

I see no problem with adapting the real thing for what you want to do; in fact, all of the material that I was using for that unsold TV series was based on actual incidents and on real practices. The combination is better than anything I could think up, and better than Hollywood, too!

Looking at some of the real material that is out there, including material in fields other than railroading, I have to wonder why the entertainment biz leaves this stuff on the table. . .instead, at least in television, we still get cops, doctors, lawyers, and people with bad jokes on a couch. . .and the networks typically pay about a million dollars per episode, just for the bad jokes on a couch show. . .ugh. . .

Truth is stranger than fiction. You also have the Yankee Air Museum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where a repair on one airplane started a fire in the hangar containing many. The few volunteers still on site threw open the doors and pushed out the B-17 -- BY -- HAND -- and than ran in to save the B-25 and C-47. These are not small airplanes.

I believe several trolley lines have done similar things in the good old days - run in, put the trolley poles up on the cars and drive em out as fast as possible.

I hope everyone goes and looks at those links--I've known about them for quite a while, but they're worth a new look every so often so no one forgets.
Also, the Great Peshtigo Fire, on the same night as the Great Chicago Fire, escapes notice. By the way, the Hartford circus fire in 1944 happened the morning after the Powhatan coal mine fire that killed 66 of our people. It disappeared from the front page the instant the bad news came in from Hartford. Yesterday was the anniversary of the 1924 Benwood mine explosion, 124 killed..and even most people in this area don't know about it.

Didn't know the volunteers pushed the planes out of the hangar in that Michigan fire. Good Heavens! Those are indeed not small aircraft.

I kept the burning shed scene, though I need to fine-tune a few things to account for not flat-spotting sixteen drivers on the working engine.

Anyone familiar with the Ohio River and Western knows what kind of strangeness they got into. Sometimes it wasn't funny, more often it was, and normal daily operations wouldn't make an editor's cut in fiction. Add to that the other things that really do go on around here--the running joke for anyone who joins the military is that you'll be in the brig or Special Forces within six months--and there's plenty of material if any of it is believable. No publisher would buy this even if I do get it written right, so it'll be an e-book or a print on demand one. The one editor I tried it on kept asking which of the characters was a vampire, when the zombies would come into play, or whether I couldn't set it back a couple of hundred years, use boats instead of trains and make it a pirate thing with lots of romance. Fair warning, there is a romance in it, but it's not exactly hearts and flowers and lace corsets and lots of swooning.

Becky, as a fiction writer (three novels) I am on your page. What publishers want (or think the public wants) is not what I care to write. For that reason I went the self-publishing route.

Just to keep this post topical, trains are mentioned in all three of my novels, though in one of them it had to be a wagon train and a bridal train.

Becky, I told my wife what your proposed publisher said about vampires and zombies, and her comment was just one word: "Pfffft!"

I'd bet that publisher is related to the fellow who figured out the perfect, no fail book. He noted that the best sellers were books about Abraham Lincoln, dogs, and doctors. So the dope wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln's doctor's dog, and even bigger dope of a publisher printed it! This story is supposedly true, although I admit to having a hard time believing it; sounds more like some crazy joke, but then, who knows?

Did this clown give any indication that he even read your manuscript?

I wonder which is worse--outright rejection, or finding that this Bozo was the only one who would give you the time of day. I bet he was the only one, too. Pfffft!! from me!!

Does anybody doubt what I've been saying about how we "don't get no respect, no respect at all?"

I have a coworker and a friend whom I told about my TV series proposal, and how that fell flat. Her comment was, "Dave, you know what Hollywood wants these days." In other words, s-e-x. . .

Pfffft!!

I haven't seen it, but I've read that a series set in medieval times, called "Game of Thrones," features quite a few people who probably feel chilly because the wardrobe department left something out for certain scenes of interaction between characters.

Is this the best we can do anymore?

Interestingly, someone did publish a book about railroaders and, shall we say, other-worldly forces. It's been so long since I've even seen the book, I'm afraid I can't recall the title or author, and I certainly didn't read the blooming thing, but I did page through it enough to tell you that it was set in the 1970s or 1980s on a railroad in the midwest, apparently patterned after the Illinois Central or successor ICG. Some sort of dark and evil force was about, and the heroes who would have to fight it were all railroaders. The good force that was calling them to this fight would speak to their leader through different railroad objects, among them an aging SD-40-2 he was running. The author was a woman who was into this sci-fi-fantasy stuff and railroading, and either worked for or had relatives who worked on the IC/ICG, hence the fairly accurate railroad portion of the writing, but I have to ask, "Why? Why? WHY can't we get the respect to put together a novel, a TV series, or a movie that gets railroading right?"

Becky, you live in the wrong time. I live in the wrong time, too--and on top of that, I've had friends tell me so!