I just saw a Virtual Railfan video of Strasburg 475 colliding with an excavator at Lehman Place this morning. Looks like significant smokebox damage has occurred to the locomotive.

For informational purposes:

https://fb.watch/gyksV0K6O7/

I will refrain from speculation or casting blame and hope that all employees involved were unharmed in the collision.

Welp, who wants to tell the boss.

Somehow, that just doesn't look real......

For me, it's the engineer's reaction, or lack thereof. As they are hitting the excavator, he's just kind of sitting there staring straight ahead, doesn't seem to be any real urgency to his actions.

Complacency kills two things: people and careers. This crew is lucky they didn't get hurt.

For the sake of due diligence, I dug around just a little bit on Flickr until I found a photo of Leaman Place showing the switch for that little spur that the excavator is sitting on. If you're lined for the spur, the switch stand shows a yellow target. If you're lined for the run around, the switch stand shows a green target. Looks like that was functioning as intended, per the video.

The warning was right there in front of the engineer at they approached the switch. Was it also there for the fireman to see as they pulled their train into Leaman Place?

I will bet that the siding switch is always lined and locked for the main and that grew a sense of complacency among the operating crew that it would be lined for their movement. Whoever was operating the excavator may not have known the normal position for the switch or forgot to line it when getting into the clear.

The boom on the little hoe must have stopped just inches from punching in the front tube sheet... that would have been exciting!

I myself was thinking this looked fake... "CGI"... until I watched the powercord that goes to the headlight start swinging as the headlight took the direct hit. Otherwise, that immediate black hole where the smokebox door got punched in looked a little odd... looks like it just "appeared"... no bent steel... just black hole.

Then... watch the shadow of the smoke and steam from the stack on the ground down there at lower right... it disappears a bit, not continuous... like something got edited out. But, it could just be low resolution problems with the video recording.

From the cameras vantage point, it doesn't look like the car the hoe's on is in the clear by much... Looking at the target on the switch stand... my first inclination is that it would be line for the diverging route, no straight on....

.

I'd wager this is exactly what happened. Regardless, the engineer should have been operating at restricted speed (or the NORAC equivalent; I'm not sure which rule book Strasburg uses) and should have seen the yellow target on the switch stand.

He never shoots the independent, and he never closed the throttle, hence all the steam out of the stack after impact. He wasn't looking forward until right before impact.

Folks, this is a good training aid for your various railroads.

You can just barely hear someone, fireman I'm guessing, shouting what sounds like "Look out, look out" right before impact.

That is good news.

The video appears to show two crew members on the engineer's side of the cab, both of who are waving at the coaches on the adjacent track. My impression is that waving at and looking out for passengers on the adjacent track is standard practice at most tourist railroads that run around at the end of their runs.



Yes, but also consider what happened from a human factors perspective. Perhaps the lesson is don't put a switch or other device that requires extra crew vigilance at a point where the crew is expected to be waving at and looking out for passengers on the adjacent track.

I think running the train in a safe manner trumps smiling and waving to the crowd. I do believe that complacency played a major part in this. It happens even to the best of us. Class Ones will periodically test their crews in the wild with a banner test. Could this not be the worst things for us in the preservation field to do also?

There's a longer video on Trainorders but one has to be a member there to watch it.

Posters on TO have indicated another employee put the excavator in the spur yesterday but did not reset the switch to the main line, and that standard practice on the railroad is for both crewmembers to be on the right side of the cab looking and waving at passengers in the train cars as they run around the train. Granted, the switch stand is on the right side of the locomotive, and was plainly visible to both crew members on the engine, had they been looking for it. By my count about five and a half seconds passed between when the engine crossed over the switch points and hit the excavator, and judging by the hollering from the cab the crew appeared to have realized something was wrong about three and a half seconds after crossing the switch and maybe two seconds before impact.

It all appears to come down to situational awareness and complacency and not assuming that someone else did their job. This should be mandatory viewing in all safety trainings, and not just on railroads.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV