I can support Kelly that it really happened. I worked in Heber the summers of '74 and '76. It was before '74. In Provo Canyon is a place called The Hump. The Hump is where the rail road crosses the Wasatch geological fault line. The rails grow upward 3-4 inches every year. I am pretty sure that Bob Hatfield was the conductor that day. I knew at least a half a dozen people that worked that train. The track would raise about 2 feet, the diaphragms on the coaches would separate about 8 to 12 inches. The train crawled over The Hump as you would expect. The kid.... well, you know. They dumped the air within half a car length and backed up to the hump. Left the body in the concession car until they got back to Heber. (As the track was on the other side of the river from the road and before cell phones.)
The summer of '76 I was escort to Jim Ozment, the Chief Engineer of D&RGW, who would come up once a year to Heber for a courtesy track inspection. He was intimately familiar with the Heber Branch as he was responsible for it before abandonment. He said that The Hump would grow perpetually. About every 10 years since it was built the Grande would go in and scrape it flat. It just was flattened again in the last few years I was told.
Attached is a photo of Jim Ozment from the book about the Thistle Landslide. (Which he was a major player in.)
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