So this actually happened a month ago, the train has been closed since. They just released a cause of the accident to the local news (link below).

If you've never been - the Dollywood Train is a 36" gauge railroad with a 3.5% grade - the locomotives are both ex WP&Y mikados and they are hand fired and coal burning.

On each end of the railroad, there is a loop track with a spring switch.

https://www.live5news.com/2023/10/24/dollywood-releases-cause-train-derailment-that-forced-passenger-evacuation/

Those are spring switches there, it'd be interesting to see what part failed.

Doesn't speak well of their railroad maintenance forces that a 'special part' has to be manufactured to effect the proper repairs. Hope they are ordering two!

I don't know why you'd say that without knowing what the part is. If it is one of the springs or a large forging it makes fare more sense economically for the railroad to outsource to a specialty shop than attempt to manufacture such an item themselves.

The thing to keep in mind is that in the eyes of the powers that be, this isn't a railroad, it is an amusement park ride. When a ride fails to the point causing injury the repairs are going to be looked at under a microscope and thoroughly tested. In every day railroading putting a truck or two on the ground at slow speed is nearly a non-event. Very different in this setting.

Hope they get back up and running soon as it's one of the best park train experiences out there. Genuine WP&Y coal fired mikados on a 5% put on quite a show.

I've ridden it several times and think they do a very credible job and put on a very professionally produced ride.

Spring switches are known to be finicky and before we reach any judgments let's see what went wrong.


Ross Rowland

My hobby is club sports car racing. While I may not have all the spares I need at any point in time - if I have something break and I have to order something, I always order two - Just in case. The reality for any undertaking is that you never can have enough spares.

I'm going to guess that those of you who are shocked at the lead times aren't in the industry. Clearly you haven't purchased any turnouts lately. The last ones I bought had a lead time of 6 to 8 months. Bought them in May, if I'm lucky, they'll be on site in November. These are standard turnouts, nothing special.

How about something even simpler than that? Bought some Racor 22E switch stands from A&K. That's about as "vanilla" as it gets. They're used by just about everyone. They used to be in stock. Current lead time 28-30 weeks. Yep, 7 to 8 months for a plain old switch stand.

If they can get their parts in a month or two, I may have to call and find out where they buy stuff at!

No idea if the lead times issue is directly related to the recovery for the incident, but yeah, we're seeing three real trends that continue and impact everybody....

1) At least in our state, with any federal or state funded grant, a real crackdown on 'Buy American' now extended to RELAY materials, not just new steel, which was understood before. Perfectly good 6" double-shoulder relay tie plates stamped "CN" rejected and had to be sorted back out, along with other #1 relay 115# rail from non-US. So 1940 115# from Canada was pulled right back out.

2) Lead times on about anything creeping around a year; enough of a problem that it's become SOP to have to request grant extensions simply because it will take a year for material to arrive. Your grant may expire before you can bid and receive the material.

3) Extreme difficulty sourcing US material on certain things; particularly cast self-guarded switch frogs - those are over a year lead time if can be found at all. You can get waivers, but proving it takes time as well.

So part of the lead time issue is related to this in my opinion; the increase in rail funding particularly at the federal level has overloaded the supply chain.

Feels like a business opportunity!

.

I’m camping in Pigeon Forge this weekend and can hear the whistle from the campground. They must have gotten everything repaired and back in operation.

Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

Quote from poster above "Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."

Easy to say if your not the one paying for it!
Mike Tillger

Except when the price of not having it is higher

It takes money to make money. If you can't afford spares, you can't afford to remain in operation.