Just posted to "Flimsies":

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=256069

According to a report on TrainOrders.com, the pilot of one of the loco replicas was somewhat seriously damaged............

They poured coal into the engine? You have to put in wood to reverse the locomotive!

The Salt Lake Tribune reports both locomotives were moving (back to the engine house) and the Jupiter ovetook #119, causing the collision. The pilots of both engines were damaged.

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3808675

"Unfortunately, when the ceremony was over , the engineer mistakenly poured the coal to "The Jupiter" and, ran right into ole number "119" , both engine replicas."

"poured the coal"??
at first, I had no clue what that meant..but now I think I get it..
the reporter, being wholly ignorant of how locomotives work, wanted to say "The engineer gave "too much gas" to one of the engines, and it ran into the other one"..kinda like "the driver of the car hit the accelerator too fast"..
but the reporter is thinking "dont steam engines run on coal? so how do you make a locomotive go too fast?? probably by pouring on too much coal..ok, that makes sense, I will go with that."



Scot

"Pour on the coal" is an old expression roughly meaning "go faster." It probably originated from steam locomotives. In this case, the reporter may have been using it in that context, and did not mean it literally.

This expression is passing out of use these days. I have not heard it used now in years.

Les

Reminds me of an old war story of my fathers. His tank group landed on a small island in the pacific that had several miles of road served by two jeeps. Unfortunately, coming to meet them both jeeps ran into each other and were out of service, causing a nasty forced march.

Maybe of they laid more track there would be room to run two locomotives?

dave

and no doubt where the expression "pouring it on" came from...

Stephen

And the reporter probably didn't know that one was a wood burner and the other coal. Or the originals were!

Later!
Mr. Ed

Another story is from the very early days of automobiles. One state in the Mid-west (I think the story is Ohio) had only four automobiles and two of them managed to collide.

In 1972, all four Military Police vehicles in Garmisch, Germany were involved in an accident while responding to the same call.

Sounds like this accident is getting more attention than it deserves. A minor bump that splinters a wooden pilot. They are used to running these two engines within a foot of each other every day. I would be surprised if they did not crunch pilots more often. Also, these old pilots have no nose to nose coupler ability, and thus no buffering ability. A minor bump that would just shake the cinders loose on a coupler to coupler collision would of course damage the pilots.

When I first saw the 119 at Promontory in 1995, its wood pilot assembly was missing. When I asked why, I was told that when the Jupiter last overran its stopping mark at the site, it was "discovered that the Jupiter's wood pilot was stronger than the 119's wood pilot" and a replacement pilot for the 119 was under construction.

Since these engines face each other under steam every day, and since an intact pilot assembly is critical to the public's perception of these engines, I wonder if it might be a good idea to build a complete wood pilot assembly for each engine, drilled, fitted and painted complete, to hold in reserve.

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"Fortunately, I-ah keep a numbered set of feathers for just such an occasion." -- Foghorn Leghorn