I have a photo of a CSX track with the rail nearly entirely worn down to the trackbed, caused by continuous running of the engine with a stalled train.

Does anyone know, was the result of a sleeping crew or an unattended "runaway"?

If it is on other than main tracks, I'd bet a paycheck that it's from remote control operations. I've not had a modern locomotive slip that badly or to that level in the better part of 20 years. I HAVE seen locomotives in hump operations and RCO that have purposely had their wheel slip devices disabled in order to keep the engines moving and only through the crew catching the wheel slip did more damage not occur.

Joe

I've seen photos from RR Army units in WW2 where diesel crews have fallen alseep and the wheels have ground down rails almost to the point of cutting them in half.

There is an old story I've heard a few times about something similar to the picture.

Back in the day when locomotives had deadman pedals an engineer had devised a great way to get a nap during his run. This guy had figured out that if he lit a cigarette at the bottom of the hill and held it between his fingers it would burn him by the time he got to the top of the hill. The engineer pulled this trick many times with no problem, until one night.

He had done the whole cigarette routine at the bottom of the hill and as usually it got to his fingers and woke him up. Except this time the train was sitting still about halfway up the hill with the engines wide open in number 8. When the crew got off to inspect the engines they found the rail had been worn about halfway down. The division superintendent was so pissed/impressed that he had the rails put on display at the division HQ.

But that's an old railroad story, who knows how true it is.

Hi,

Along the same lines, A Southern Rwy freight supposedly pulled into Inmann Yards in the 1970's. The R/C unmanned mid-train helper was in the train about 2/3rds of the way back. The road engineer tied the train down and signed out.

A rookie hostler was sent to take the road locos down to Peagram Shops a few miles away. He apparently did not know to check to see if the R/C in the lead unit was turned off. His way down to Peagram was back and forth across a 4-6 track central trunk shared with Seaboard and going through at least one and I think two interlockings.

The midtrain helper in Inmann could not move the train with the brakes tied down so it just spun and spun in response to the R/C signals. Apparently no one in Inmann noticed the loco(s) in the middle of the yard running but not moving until it wore through the rails and fell over knocking over a few box cars on the adjacent tracks.

Doug vV

This once happened to a train tied down not far from where I live. It was the result of the crew not checking the unmanned helper locomotive before heading to the hotel.

...and they want 1 man crews....robot remote helpers...

Well, there was an example here in an Upstate NY city were some loco(s) where "parked" on a siding with a short train awaiting another crew. Engines idling, hand brakes applied, reverser in neutral.

Some local urban "youth" decided it would be fun to "play with" the train. They got in the cab and managed to notch the throttle up to 8 which if I remember correctly moved the train a bit and broke the train line applying the brakes in emergency. Then the switch that is supposed to throttle back the engines malfunctioned and the locos sat for hours pushing in notch 8 against a train with the brakes applied......

Of course the locals ran away without telling anybody about their "magnificent adventure" and the locos wore the rail almost through to the ties. Imagine the surprise when the relieving crew showed up to a train at full throttle and not moving....

They had to get the wreckers out to jack up the locos to get the wheels out of the divots in the rail and put new rails underneath them just to get the units back to the shop.

Cheers, KevinK

Thanks for great responses.

I suspect these are the photos you are referring to (or similar)

http://s890.photobucket.com/user/HAPSHO ... 0.jpg.html

http://s890.photobucket.com/user/HAPSHO ... 6.jpg.html

Probably of the same incident:

http://i.imgur.com/lJqNQ.jpg

another set:

http://s115.photobucket.com/user/tmuir1 ... T.jpg.html

http://s115.photobucket.com/user/tmuir1 ... T.jpg.html


...and how it happens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCq85tvWpwM

Yup

The above images go with the story that was related by KevinK. As I understand it, there were three locos, and the PC switch on one of them failed to open when the trainline dumped. So the rail burn was from a single unit, running for some undetermined period of time.

JR