2317 derailment at Steamtown

[Stephen Hussar]

Looks pretty serious. The 2317 ran across a grade crossing in which the flangeways had been filled in up to the railhead. What sort of damage could this cause?? http://picasaweb.google.com/boblyndall/2317Derailment#

[Keith Taylor]

Stephen,
Derailments were and are an everyday occurance on the railroad. The derailment probably won't do any damage to the locomotive, but sometimes the re-railing process can. Sometimes if the brake rigging is fouling the rails, and they can't get re-railing frogs in place, they may have to take a torch to the brake rigging. From the pictures, it looks like merely pulling it back the way it came, it should walk right back on with just some wooden blocking.
Keith

[Wayne Laepple]

I agree with Keith. As derailments go, this one isn't too serious. And since they are right near a switch, they should be able to pull the engine back, and with a few strategically-placed wedges and blocks, it should pop right back on. Poor ol' 2317 seems to spend almost as much time on the ties as on the rail these days! What was it an old D&H guy who worked for me used to say? Oh yeah -- "Keep 'em on the shiny side."

[Stephen Hussar]

Keith, I've actually seen it happen. I was standing at a grade crossing with my dad when I was 12 or 13, somewhere I think on the B&M's Hillsboro branch. He was shooting super 8 movies of a geep pushing a snowplow across the crossing when ice in the flangeway caused the plow to derail and practically fall over...good thing it fell away from us! Someday I'll find that film...

[Mike Fox]

I watched UP once use two sidewinders to lift an engine, one side at a time, then set it back on the rails after they pulled the rails back together. The rails had spread under the weight. An old siding that went to a Coors Distributor. That one car they were trying to set off cost them a little bit.

[Keith Taylor]

I was once running a local freight on the Lehigh Valley's Irvington branch. We had a tank car derail, and we didn't know it as the car was empty...it just rode along side the rails on the ties. About three miles farther east from where it derailed, we went over a trailing point switch and the car re-railed itself! The only way we knew what had happened was when we headed back west to the terminal at Irvington, we saw all of the cut ties and grooves cut in the pavement by the flanges at the crossings at grade! Just as a bit of trivia...one of the customers on the Irvington Branch was Lionel Trains. And no...they did not give us a "shipper's discount!"
Keith

[Bill Sample]

Although only for a couple of hundred yards, a derail/rerail event also happened on the ex-Connecticut Valley line of the P&W in Rocky Hill CT a year or two ago, except in this case it was a loco on the rear of the train that picked the switch points of a double ended siding, rerailing at the other end.  The crew was unaware until the approached the site on the return move to Middletown from Hartford.  What a surprise.   It also happened with a freight car truck on a local freight in Hartford - right through the station - back around 1975.