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Once again another train wreck topic got me going.... I dug out a bunch of old photos that I found, and will scan them. Here is the result of a head on collision I worked on many years ago in our area. We had this wreck back in the late 1980's. It was in Colden NY behind a ski slope, about twenty miles from Winters Railroad Service's base. It was on the old B&O "Chessie System" line between Buffalo and Salamanca. It occured about 8:00 AM in the morning. My father took the call in the office that came in from Chessie.... exact words....... "We Need Everything you have NOW...We have a head on collision with men killed and others trapped,Colden, Rt 240 by the ski slope. Five locomotives and at least twenty cars on the ground....Hurry... We are sending state police to escort you.We need your equipment to free the men... We arrived on scene with four 583 sidebooms, a D9G, D8H, and all the support equipment 70 minutes after the call. By midnight the right of way was cleared. It took another week to load out the wrecked cars and locomotives and clean up 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel. The stack cars had just become popular and the wreckage of those was either scrapped or containers taken out on trailer frames. Two men were killed in one of the lead locomotives and three other men hurt. We assisted with removing the bodies. I went back with my father the next day and he took these photos... The first set is whats left of a locomotive "EMD GP-38" that was the lead unit on the northbound freight. We dragged three engines up a steep hill to a level area. These engines were stacked three high with one sitting right on top of this one and a third under the the end of the first two... the others rolled over off the track.... Both trains were doing about 25 mph when it occured. Wrecked GP-38...notice the actual engine and whats left of the main generator.... the electrical cabinet in just behind the seats in the cab..... This was the engine with the two men killed instantlly..  Another set of the scene after clearing track right of way....  "Double Stack" car wreckage..... we pulled 10 connected units all at once down off the tracks using six big Cats winching at full force.... we had the track open in under 12 hours. 
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I remember going to see this when I was younger with my dad, too young to remember everything but someof it. Thanks for sharing Tim.
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Tim, do you have any pics of the Oneonta, NY train wreck??? It's the one that had a huge GE armature ring on it, the train derailed and 2 of the propane tank cars exploded. It sent 2 halves of the tank cars side by side 1 1/2 miles away from the wreck!!
I learned about this train wreck when I was in the Fire Department back in 1976. It was a course on hazardous materials and they showed some side pictures of the train wreck. Of course they also showed side pictures of the gasoline truck wreck that nearly destroyed Lock, NY one year.
Nice pics Tim, I always find it interesting how train wrecks can stack up the cars like some kid picked them up and stacked them on a model railroad set.
Dain
I'm a kid at heart, so I will play with any model construction vehicle from 1:87 scale to 1:1 scale!!!!
Age is a state of time NOT a state of mind!!
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Dain, Yes I have a few of that one.... I don't recall a generator stator on that one, but it was before my time realy.... I think the mid seventies.... But we did do a job in Owego NY that had a big 250 ton stator go upside down and we recovered it... Here are the pics I have from the Oneonta BLEVE's as I recall, at least four cars went up at about one hr intervals.... If you look close you can see the two halves of two different cars across the river nearly 3/4 of a mile away... those pieces weighed about 25 tons each. These photos are some my father had in his collection of photos from before my days. Here is a propane car layed out like a sheet....its about 1" thick steel...   
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Thanks Tim. the first pics didn't come up Thur. today they did. thats some destruction for 25 mph. wow. I have been looking for pics of the CSX wreck where the loco was on the trestle when it was washed out. I forget the exact location. they used a large hyd crane,a couple of sidebooms and at least 1 loco to pull/lift the loco back on the tracks. I tried R/R sites still no pics.Any help? thanks Bob
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Thanks Tim!! The one I referred to where the GE ring thing was there, it was a large circle thing in the bottom of the crater that was formed by the Bleve. The photo I saw had a D8 sitting next to the ring thing. I think we were told it was the outside of a generator (like the outside of an electric motor with the wire windings in it) and it's diameter was as big as the length of the D8!!!
Also for those who might not realize it, back in the earlier 70s the Cat D8 was the biggest dozer Cat made at the time and the D9 was just starting to be made and were not a frequent site like they were in the late 70s and 80s on till the D10 came about!!
Oh and remember the old way to communicate, called CB Radio?? Those of us that used them back then had to have licenses and handles (nick names). My "handle" was "D9" as I had seen the pics of some around the time I became a CBer which was back in around 1974. Oh yeah I still go by that "handle" when I use my CB for traveling and yes, I did have a license to operate a CB when they required them. My "call sign" was KBS0458!!
Dain
I'm a kid at heart, so I will play with any model construction vehicle from 1:87 scale to 1:1 scale!!!!
Age is a state of time NOT a state of mind!!
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Thank You Tim.
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Super Tim! its hard to get the head around the mess that can be caused,and harder again to think how these happen, These been one or two threads recently that ended up looking very similar to those pics 
Why is "phonetically" spelt with a "ph"? ... It's better to be silent and thought a fool, then to speak up and remove all doubt The complex of Newgrange was originally built between c. 3100 and 2900 BC,[2] meaning that it's aproximately 5,000 years old. According to Carbon-14 dates,[3] it is more than 500 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and predates Stonehenge by about 1,000 years.
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Keep 'em comin'. TFS
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dain555 wrote:
Also for those who might not realize it, back in the earlier 70s the Cat D8 was the biggest dozer Cat made at the time and the D9 was just starting to be made
The D9 came out in the 50s. The D9G came out in the early 60s.
Dump on the edges, the middle will take care of itself. Never look down on ANYONE! Unless it is to lift them up.
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And roads pop because of the heat
Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.
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tomcat1191 wrote:And roads pop because of the heat Yes concrete roads do pop because of the heat at the slab joints, I've seen it and fixed some!! I've also seen blacktop roads get pushed up because of the summer heat and also seen rain water mess up both kinds of road surfaces.
Dain I'm a kid at heart, so I will play with any model construction vehicle from 1:87 scale to 1:1 scale!!!! Age is a state of time NOT a state of mind!!
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