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Work and Events / Re: J&S Truck Build/Rebuild - Official Work Thread

« on: December 05, 2022, 08:32:16 AM »

Jason told me that the J & S Trucks for #21 were nearly ready.  So this is a good time, I think, to tell the story of the derailment that they were in at Edaville.  I was as employee at Edaville from 1972 until 1989 with three years off from 1976 -1979.  It was a weekend day in December of 1974 and the first train out of Edaville Station left in daylight.  We opened at 2:00pm so this was probably the first train at 3:00.  The 1st train had #8 on it with all the clerestory style coaches in its consist.  The second (or third) car back was SR&RL #21.  All was fine for the first part of the trip, then after descending Mt. Urann and traversing almost the whole lenght of the (Richardson) Speedway, it happened.  Coach #21 broke an axle and hit the dirt, estimated speed was 10-15 MPH.  The engineer upon looking back saw sand flying in all directions and he quicly brought the train to a stop.  I was not on the that train that day having been assigned to the 3rd train as a conductor, but I got the news first hand.  There was no personal injury as I recall, it could be that were no or very few passengers in the front of the train because it was an early trip.  I don't know for sure but the 2nd train must have rescued the pasengers.  What I do know is that very soon there were two cranes there that moved car 21 into the adjacent road.  They set car 21 up on blocking right in the middle of the road without its trucks.  We later brought those trucks into Edaville center with the 49' GMC Winch truck.  The broken axle came in some how, too, probably in the Case loader.  The axle was broken off outside the wheel set as cleanly as if sliced by a knife.  It was later determined that there was no radius in the machine work where the axel was turned for the journal.  It was a square corner and that is a no-no!  The axles were not made by a wheel shop but by a machine shop in New Bedford.  They did not know about the radius and it wasn't caught when the wheels were installed in the trucks.  The trucks were repaired, the wheels with new axles were installed and the car continued in service for many years after the incident.  I was pressed into service fixing track that day in my Conductors uniform and then they sent me in to the station to tell them they could start running trains again.  As I recall by 6:30 the trains were running again.  That was a remarkable accompishment and speaks to the high quality of management and staff that we had a that time.  I'll also say that many thousands of miles were run off safely at Edaville and this was the rare exception that proved the rule.