I forget where I found these photos, but they show a runaway track on an obscure little trolley line in Lancaster County, PA.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

That was a common design practice.

The La Mesa Branch of the San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railway had a split rail derail installed after the daily freight came down the hill on Commercial Street and failed to stop and call for permission to cross the San Diego Trolley tracks on 13th Street. It was removed once the Trolley service was extended to Euclid and then beyond to La Mesa, El Cajon and Santee.

Larry, the Lancaster County, Pa. photos are in "Trolleys of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country", printed in 1970 by John D Denny, Jr. of Columbia, Pa.
The wreck photo shows a Lancaster & York Furnace Street Rwy. car that didn't make it all the way back down Mt. Nebo on the Lancaster & Southern Street Rwy. in 1905. The line was rerouted in 1911.

Here is a link to the ICC investigation of the head on collision south of Rockledge, Tennessee on December 23, 1915. The second image link shows the layout of the trackage at Rockledge and the alignment of the track southward. The track to the south was mostly (and still is) in very deep stone cuts.

http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net ... select+294)

You can't link to a Report since they are only on line when you have requested that Feport and until you close the connection. The Internet addresses are assigned dynamically and are usually different the next time someone searches.
Please tell us the Year and then Railroad Name to search at:
http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Contents
It can be helpful to tell us how far down the list if there are many Reports that Year for the same Railroad Name. The Year may be the Year of the Report and not the earlier Year of the accident.

The report is the last one of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway for 1915. Wreck was a head on collision south of Rockledge, Tennessee. 2 employees on duty killed, 10 employees not on duty killed, 3 passengers injured, 4 employees on duty injured and 37 employees not on duty injured.

The diagram with the track layout at Rockledge is the second image in the report. Tender of the passenger engine telescoped the car behind it. All of the off duty employees killed and injured were deadheading home to Nashville for the holiday. As the track layout changed in 1916, it may be that the change had some indirect involvement in the fatal wreck. The line believed to have energized the signal was the Western Union wire as it was being moved to a new set of poles at the time of the wreck. Testing performed afterwards confirmed that the Western Union wire was capable of interfering with the signal circuit and it did in fact cause the signal in question to clear when intentionally placed in contact with the wire controlling the signal by the inspectors.

The Colorado Midland had a runaway track on the 4% Ute Pass grade down from Cascade to Colorado City. The runaway track was installed a short distance below Cascade in case a the engineer did not have his train under control when the down grade increased from 3% to 4% in the narrowest part of Ute Pass. Interestingly, the track only caught runaway equipment when it was tested. Both trains that ran away on the 4% grade did so after passing the runaway track.

Thank you.
That runaway track wasn't very far down the hill,
and it only worked for something on the siding!

There were two runaway tracks on the 6000 foot long, 3.5% steep graded spur from the Southern Railway/NS/Bluegrass Railway Museum trackage to the Kentucky Utilities Tyrone Power Plant.

http://www.bgrm.org/#/history/4567549408 (Click on "Operations before 1980's")

Here you go... From my copy of Camp's Notes on Track. Note the gantlet type "Double-Ended Catch Track" described.

Tavor -

Although boilerwash mentioned the incident of the runaway diesel down to the Kentucky Utilities power plant earlier in this thread, thanks for posting this reference to Mr. Mize's story with additional information. Young's High Bridge is a fascinating structure as can be attested by the photo showing a Southern SW-1 led freight on the bridge. I wonder if there are any existing photos of steam on the bridge? One thing I hadn't heard about before reading Mr. Mize's story, is the "shifting" of the bridge. I wonder if that actually happened, or was only "imagined" by the crew as an excuse to convince NS into moving them across the bridge in a hi-rail truck, and eventually taking the bridge out of service. Not really a part of "safety tracks" (the subject of this thread) but something that might be explored in a different thread.

Les

Not to derail the thread but in answer to your question there are only two photos of steam on the bridge that I'm aware of. One is from the bridge's opening ceremony seen here:

http://lexhistory.org/sites/default/fil ... k=d4bFBMEo

Lore of the picture states that the figure seen dressed in white standing on the cowcatcher of the loco in the distance is Mr. Young himself. The other picture is (or was) in the archive of the BGRM and shows a Southern 2-8-0 pulling a loaded coal train across the bridge in 30's or 40's and was photographed because it was the heaviest train to ever attempt to cross the bridge. I guess the photographer thought at worst he would get some good photos of some hell-a-shish aftermath.



Not sure if the "shifting" the crews felt was actually real but as impressive as the structure is the sucker is built pretty light for a structure its size. The thing is literally akin to a big boys version of an erector set. Combined with the fact that the thing hadn't seen any major maintenance is almost 100 years when it was closed, you couldn't blame the crews about being nervous about the thing.

On the other hand though it is my understanding that the bungee jump company that eventually bought the bridge had the bridge examined and the only difficentcy was some minor slippage of one of the pier footers near the river on the Woodford county sign. Otherwise it was the opinion of the examiners that the bridge is actually still sound enough to still hold the loads it was originally designed for.

I had heard the 'shifting' wasn't the Youngs High Bridge, but the adjacent (and also large) Cedar Brook Trestle.

How come I have never seen a picture of a run away train..................


On a milk carton?