2012 UP 844 over shoots station stop in Mt Pleasant Texas when support diesel fails to throttle down. Driver wheels become locked in emergency breaking, and flat spots occur on all 4 drivers.
This thread was a great read... thought I would bring it up to see if there where any new comments.

Brian are you making those statements as facts or are you speculating on what happened?
Thanks
Mike Tillger

I was on that trip. It started with the operator at Bethlehem sticking us away and basically forgetting us. I heard he got sacked after it was all said and done. This lead to the need for additional water which was delivered by the Packerton (I think) VFC. The additive was an anti friction item that made what was called "slippery water" that increases water flow in fire hoses and makes lots of pretty foam in a boiler. This turned the 2102 into a 809,000 lb travelling bubble bath which in addition to causing carry over, made making steam difficult. We finally came to a rest just short on the PA TP NE extension bridge when there wasn't enough steam pressure to run the compressors to keep the brakes off. The ugly facts were passed on to me by a member of the engine crew a few weeks after the excursion.

1989 an overnight trip with 611 from Lexington, KY to Chattanooga became quite the adventure. The trip started fine and dandy. We got to Danville, KY in no time and made a crew change, and that's when the fun began...

We got to the first detector outside of Danville and it gives the message, "HOTBOX AXLE 3 4 WEST SIDE." The train slows to a stop as the pilot engineers informs the dispatcher, "we weren't sure if the detector say axle 3 and 4 or axle 34 so we're going to stop and check it out." We make about a 20 minute stop and take back off, until we get to the next detector and it says the same thing, and the pilot engineer reports the same thing. This wouldn't be so bad, but on this section of NS there is a detector every 10 miles. You can see where this is going... 10 miles, stop, 10 miles, stop, 10 miles, stop... After about 5 stops and running about 2 hours late, the RFE of the division got up in the engine during lunch at Oneida.

Speaking of that lunch, the passengers were forced to stay on board while the engine was serviced. This wouldn't be so bad but there was no run-by and everyone was starting to get a little grumpy from all the sitting. Then they served lunch... The lunch was simple boxed lunches provided by a local caterer and they were just awful. It wasn't just me being a picky 11 year old, everyone thought they were awful. The lunches were so bad that I remember people talking about them 3 or 4 years later.

So we leave Oneida with the RFE on the seatbox and get nothing but green lights all the way to Chattanooga. In fact we only stopped to change crews in Oakdale and made up about 45 minutes of time. The passenger start breathing a sigh of relief as we start to back down the wye into the Choo-Choo... then we stop just 1000 feet short of the station.

"Hello Citgo, we're on the ground. The engine's drivers are on the ground."

The rail in the wye had turned over and the last 2 driver wheels were off the rails. After about 10 minutes they made the decision to let the passengers off and walk to the busses. Tired, exhausted, and starving the meal at the motel was the best food I've ever had in my life.

The next day we board the train to find out the 611 wouldn't be pulling the train back to Lexington. Instead we got two nondescript GP38s and proceed to absolutely FLY up the CNO&TP. We were clocked at running 60+ in a few places and got to Lexington so early that the busses to take us to the parking lot hadn't arrived yet. Luckily my Father (who hadn't taken the trip) was always early to these sort of things meant my mom and I didn't have to wait long. (I have no idea how long the rest of the passengers had to wait for the buses)

Somewhat timely to this discussion - minor headline in today's Chicago Tribune. No one was hurt, and apparantly NOT an official IRM charter:

Chartered CTA train derails in South Loop: 'We now have a unique story to tell'

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... 3163.story

In the mid 1980's the Bluewater Michigan Chapter, NRHS ran a trip from the Detroit area on the CSX ex PM line to the Holland, Michigan tulip festival -- just west of Lansing, we hid a car with three teenagers in it -- they had tried to beat the train and to say it nicely didn't make it.

After a delay of a few hours, which included a pull apart, we continued to Holland and got back to Detroit very late at night.

The next morning, I learned one of our volunteers died of a heart attach on the way home.

Bob H

I've been on several memorable boo-boos in my life of riding excursions. Here are a few I either heard of or was part of:

Probably about 1967, I was on a Midwest Chapter excursion to Little Valley, NY from Akron. I believe it was the second series of excursions the chapter ran to that town on the E-L. The first set a couple of years before was very successful, the town really rolled out the red carpet for the passengers, so they decided to do it again. My memory is a little fuzzy, since I would have been no more than 10. I believe things were going well up until the return trip to Akron. This was the Saturday trip, and they were supposed to repeat the excursion for Sunday. We departed Little Valley, and at some point in the next few hours were informed that we would be delayed by a derailment somewhere to the West. I have no idea where, maybe some E-L historian could fill-in details, this would probably have been in early October. I remember waking up watching the Sun rise over Youngstown, OH, still an hour out of Akron. The day trip turned out to be almost exactly 24 hours, and I believe they cancelled the Sunday trip.

Then in August of '69 I was supposed to go on my first mainline steam excursion, behind 2102 out of Durrand, MI, with a charter bus trip to and from. The excursion was cancelled because the '02 was involved in a derailment on a diamond during another trip out of Chicago the week before. Again, perhaps a Chicago area fan can fill in details of that mishap. I do know that the damage from that derailment plagued the '02 for years after that.

The beginnings of the Cuyahoga Valley Line/CVSR were a little rocky. The first trip, a Saturday evening press run to Hale Farm and Village with 4070 was on a Saturday in late June of '75. I chased, having just turned 18, this was my first adult unaccompanied photo outing. They were late, it was sunset when they passed me at the old Jaite order station at Vaughn Rd. Then when they got to Ira Rd., the stopping point then for Hale Farm, the engine crew was checking around, noticed the engineer's side trailing truck bearing felt hot and opened the journal, which immediately flamed-out, scorched bearing, end of 4070's use for about six weeks. 4070 was eased down to the stub siding at Bath Rd. and set out. The Chessie diesel on the North end took the VIP's home.

Then in mid-August of '75, the first time I rode the Valley Line, on a Sunday, everything started out fine. On the return trip it started storming, incredibly hard. We got North of the current boarding site at Rockside Rd., actually North of the wye at Willow, and stopped. The tracks were under water at an outside bend in the river. A couple of the engine crew guys got off and walked ahead to find the tracks were gone for a couple of hundred feet. So, we backed up to Willow, behind the old Value City Furniture store (which would become the boarding site three years later for several years) and the director of Hale Farm, who happened to be on board, went to find a pay phone (how did we ever get along without cell phones anyway?) and try to scrounge up every charter bus he could find late on a Sunday. Actually, it could have been worse, I think it only took a couple of hours before the first buses started to arrive. Fortunately, the parking lot at the Cleveland Zoo the Valley Line was using (beside where C&O 2707 used to be displayed) on the CL&W sub was high enough that it didn't flood, because the elephants ended up swimming that afternoon. Fortunately, back then the CT&V sub was still important to Chessie for moving ore and coal South, so they fixed the line fairly quickly.

Before the infamous 2102/4070 Horseshoe Curve trips in '77, there were the Kent-Greenville 2102 trips of April 30/May 1, 1977, 35 years ago today. Things went well on the trip out, arrived on-time, etc. I noticed, however, when they were turning and servicing the '02 at the B&LE roundhouse in Greenville that it looked like the tender was less than half-full of coal. I figured they knew what they were doing, but I figured wrong. We made it back to along the Ravenna Arsenal, about 10 miles out from Kent, and we started slowing down and soon came to a stop. Yes, they ran out of coal. CR had done some tie replacement recently, and there were pieces of ties along the RoW (this was in the days when the automated tie pullers chopped the old ties in two to get them out from under the rails), so the crew scavenged up pieces of ties and used them to keep some kind of fire going, but could not get enough pressure back to get the brakes to release. Eventually a van train came in behind us, cut off his power and pushed us to Kent.

Then, a couple of weeks later, Friday the 13th to be exact, when it came time for the double-header to leave Kent for Pittsburgh and their rendezvous with infamy on the Curve, someone forgot to order the front-end loader to coal the 2102 for the trip, and they ended up using a five-gallon bucket brigade to fill the tender.

Fun times!

In 2001, shortly after returning from the BNSF EAS trips through OK and TX the NRHS convention was held in St. Louis. 1522 was laid on for two trips, one to Hannibal, MO and return and one to Newburg, MO and return.
The Hannibal trips would stop at Hannibal and unload the passengers, and I think tickets were sold for people to ride up to W. Quincy to turn the train and return. Things went pretty well on the NB trip, but started going in the toilet after leaving Hannibal for West Q. From there south, we were held for everything that moved on the BNSF or so it seemed and by the time we returned to St. Louis we were very late.
I was scheduled to run again the next day and at the terminal in downtown St. Louis, a BNSF executive, who I shall leave un named, came up and told us he was embarrassed by the way we were jerked around the day before and to be assured today won't be a repeat of that. He was right! Everything was in the hole for us, we did two runbys at Rook and arrived at Newburg in good shape. (Better than my bladder!) We ran through Newburg to Bundy Jct, which is where the Ft. Leonard Wood branch connects with the BNSF and pulled up past the wye and waited for the crew to align the switch in back of us. Meanwhile all of us in the cab got down to inspect drawbars, etc.(What a relief!!) In fact some wise guy got on the radio and said the Little Piney was rising, Wirth must be on the ground draining.
We did two runbys at Newburg and left eastbound and had the same situation. Clear through, arrived in Lindenwood yards early and the BNSF exec detrained and arranged for two runbys in the yard. We got back downtown on time after a very smooth trip.
After the day before which was a drug out disaster, I still appreciate what he did for us. Tried to get him up in the cab but he stayed back on the crew car, kicked off his shoes and worked.
Great guy!

MRSR frequently had lots of fun slipping while going up Tacoma Hill. That was a regular routine "back in the day". They even have some crazy conductor they used to call "Mr Sandman" since when they started to stall, he ride on the front footboards sanding like it was the Darjeeling Himalyan Railway as they went up the hill. Of course I have no recollection of who that was (cough, cough). I rather suspect the FRA would frown on this practice nowadays.



By the way, it turns out that even if the engine isn't moving, there can still be a lot of steam coming out of the nozzle. I'm not sure if it was a leaky throttle blowing by, the blower or maybe the air pump exhaust, but there was an invisible jet of steam coming out the cylinder saddle. I discovered this the hard way, while feeling around inside the smokebox in a futile effort to figure out just where in the heck that nozzle went? The resulting 2nd degree burns hurt like mad, and also puzzled the emergency room tech (How did you do that? You burnt it on a WHAT?)

Correct, this was NOT an official IRM charter. Rather it was about forty people - most of them IRM members - who chartered four 2200s (the CTA's oldest cars) for the day.

The derailment itself wasn't anything to write home about. Moving north into the 14th street middle track (which is immediately south of Roosevelt Rd on the Green & Orange lines), the first truck on the fourth car in the consist (#2279) split the switch, resulting in a slow, minor derailment on only that truck. No one was injured, and there was no operator error.

Initially we were told that an Orange line train (which was waiting at Roosevelt) would be pulling up next to ours, and we would "walk the plank" across to it. However the plan was changed to us detraining and walking on the structure to the station at Roosevelt, which was a rare adventure to say the least. Unfortunately, for regular CTA riders, this little mishap blocked any train traffic through the area so the Green and Orange lines were split in two for a few hours.

CTA/CFD/CPD personnel were extremely professional during the whole ordeal, although that might have to do with their dealing with the charter train's riders - all of whom thought the derailment and the subsequent response was very interesting and were more than willing to partake in such an ordeal.

Oh God, I remember that. What a heartbreaker. He and the other volunteers had been kept very very late by duties related to tying up the train, and was driving home at some terrible hour.

"Oh God, I remember that. What a heartbreaker. He and the other volunteers had been kept very very late by duties related to tying up the train, and was driving home at some terrible hour."--Robert MacDowell

Could that have been the worst of them all?

Far from the worst, but one incident that was captured on camera--the collapse of a tree on the New River Train in 1992, during a storm:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0lGtNap-kE

Despite that, I still salute the New River people and CSX for running the train anyway, in that it was done in the spirit that weather means much less to a railroad than about anything else.

I recall an excursion on Muni, probably hired out by the Western Railway Museum, involving a single-truck car, 578 IIRC. The car had run fine on street track, but derailed on private right-of-way just north of 20th (which is also the steepest grade in the whole Muni and that's saying something). Seems one of the wheels had decided to start floating on the axle, and floated inward enough to derail once it no longer had street flange to hold it in place. I believe Muni dispatched another historic car so we could complete our excursion. However, the most notable thing about the misadventure was the disruption it caused to MUNI operations. All the revenue J-church cars pulled into stations at 18th and 22nd (where there are turnbacks) and disgorged passengers, telling them to walk between the stations. This took them right past us, and oh, the dirty looks we got! It was basically a steady stream, probably thousands of people in the couple hours we were there. It's amazing how many people ride what was then just the last 10 blocks of the J-line.

Only because this is personal.
Back in the mid 1950's. The Metropolitan Philadelphia Railway Association hosted an around the horn 12 car MP-54 trip. Not the existing SEPTA lines but Philadelphia to Havre de Gras, MD, up the river line to Harrisburg and back to Philadelphia.

It was a very hot, no a/c day and we ran out of soda before Havre de Gras. Since I was the soda pop meister, I rounded up volunteers and cleaned out the local store in Havre de Gras. We formulated a plan where several of us would de-train in Harrisburg, grab a taxi and head to the nearest soda supply stores. The first two arrived unloaded the sodas and all was well, but...

I had filled my taxi with sodas and while trying to get an express cart to move it to the train, I watched the markers starting to disappear eastbound. I ran and waved my arms frantically and someone saw me and pulled the emergency cord.
After a few minutes, the train backed up to me and we silently loaded the soda for the trip back to Philly.

RE: Milwaukee Speedrail fantrip head-on crash - this occurred on Saturday, Sep. 2, 1950, and was an NMRA fantrip. It was trip #3 out of 5 trips, and was the only trip using the lightweight articulated duplexes numbered 39-40. Jay Maeder was indeed at the controls (he was not supposed to be) and allowed railfans to delay his return (inbound) trip back into downtown Milwaukee, leaving the southern terminus of Hales Corners about 25 minutes late. Fantrip #4, Heavyweight 1192-1193, was already well on its way outbound by the time Maeder started back. Maeder had to pull off onto a siding - actually a spur leading to the Lakeside Power Plant beltline - to allow Car 300, on its regular Milwaukee-Hales Corners run - to proceed southbound. Railfans thought this to be another photo stop and got off the lightweight duplex to take more photos, further delaying the return trip. There was another siding at Oklahoma Avenue which Maeder could have pulled onto but did not. Although there is no direct evidence to the contrary, it has been speculated that, during the return trip, Maeder either ignored a Nachod Block "red light" signal, did not see it, or it had malfunctioned and did not display a red light, which would have forewarned him that another train was approaching from the opposite direction. The two trains collided at speed at about 9:45 AM, between Cleveland and National Avenue, with 1192-93 telescoping lead lightweight car 39 for fully 3/4 of its length, killing eight persons instantly and two more by the following day. This and other mishaps eventually resulted in the demise of Speedrail, the last operating Rapid Transit operation in southeastern Wisconsin, on June 30, 1951. A comprehensive article on the disaster can be found at: my.execpc.com/~jruss/NMRAspeedrail.html