N&W J/Powhatan Arrow Train Wreck in 1946

This wreck has always puzzled me, because N&W Locomotive Engineers had an excellent reputation.  Also, the Company had the reputation of being very strict and no-nonsense about the quality of its train handling.

 

Big Jim, do you know the "back story" on this wreck?

No railroad is immune to wrecks.

 

Rusty

Tom, this may have been the first instance of excessive speed on a curve with a J Class, but it sure wan't the last. N&W had many pretty sharp curves on the Pocahontas Division, and today's beloved 611 also fell victim of excessive speed through a sharp curve and surprisingly wound up flying over the second track and into the Tug Fork river. Someone might want to Google THAT wreck, as I have seen quite a few photos published of it.

 

The story goes that that was one of the reasons that 611 wound up being saved, as after the wreck, she was totally repaired/rebuilt, and wound up being just about the lowest accrued miles J when steam ended. 

 

Go here to find more pictures of the derailment of 604 and others: Derailment of 604

I couldn't get the ICC database to link up right, but, this will get you close: ICC

Click off the Railroad Accidents to something else, then click back onto Railroad Accidents, then click on 1946, then the first N&W report.

Thanks for posting, interesting report there is obiviously little room for error in train operation.

 

 

No, I never heard anything about these wrecks. They were too far away from our district for anyone to know anything. Looking back, I don't think we ever had a derailment on our district due to overspeed. We had some pretty slick hogheads back then.

I do know of one close call that was related to me. The engineer woke up with the throttle wide open going very fast toward a slow curve. He never shut off, but, poured the air to it. The train stretched out and slowed enough that they made it around the curve. Any other action and they would have wrecked. That was in the day of cast iron brake shoes.

I did know of one engineer who could fall asleep in a heartbeat. And one brakeman who would fall asleep mid-sentence, but, he had a medical problem.

Had the opportunity to speak with N&W/NS engineer Frank Collins (a true gentleman) in the Ludlow, KY engine facility across the river from Cincinnati, when he was about to run 611 on an excursion, about 1988. I asked him, "Wasn't one of the J's involved in a wreck - something about the engineer losing track of the curves, with the engine ending up in the Tug Fork River?" Engineer Collins said, "Try this one! It was being run by (an engineer's name I do not recall) who got lost in the fog. He was a real good runner and he was killed. His boy is a Road Foreman of Engines out of Conneaut".

The accident report states;

quote:

"A light snow was falling at the time of the accident, which occurred at 12:51 a.m."

However,

Fog is a beach! I hated fog with a passion. Especially in the daylight!!! Trying to concentrate with all of that white staring you in the face will flat wear your brain out! 

Thanks for the additional information, fellows.  Fog or snow  explains a lot.

 

Fog . . . I share your pain, Big Jim.  My home seniority district was the Los Angeles Division.  The Third District between Riverside and Los Angeles, and the Fourth District from Fullerton to San Diego were typically foggy every night in the spring and fall, and many winter and summer nights also.  Sometimes we had fog so heavy that we could only see the track every now and then, and that's no exaggeration.  In the early 1980's I had a regular assignment in passenger service on San Diegans, where there were seven intermediate passenger stops (and at least a couple of meets on single track) with a district speed of 90 MPH. The train crew had to give a highball at passenger stops using the communicating whistle, as they were somewhere back on the station platform, out of sight back in the fog. You just have to know the railroad, keep your side window open and listen to everything you are passing, and not make small talk in the cab. The great uncertainty was, "Who is out there on opposing trains, and do they know where they are?" 

 

For a couple of months, I worked the night Corona road switcher, in the fog of course.  We switched set-outs at Porphyry, did industry switching, and switched cars for through trains to pick up.  They did not have many hand-held radio packets then, so, when fog set in the Trainmen used fusees to pass signals.  When it got too thick for that, they used police whistles: two tweets, shove forward at 3-4 MPH; three tweets, back up at 3-4 MPH; one long tweet, stop.  I had my head out the window listening for police whistle signals.

 

Not intending to hi-jack this thread, but -- if fog or snow was a factor -- there is no way to know what might have distracted the N&W passenger Engineer and contributed to his losing his place in the snow or fog.  It might not take much -- some small mechanical thing, the engine frequently trying to slip on wet rail, something falling down inside the cab, pouring coffee from his thermos, etc.

Running in "cake batter" (sorry, lack of a better word) fog on a restricting signal was most agonizing!

 

I learned quick that you needed to not only learn the road ahead of you, but, also the landscape to your side. Many times that was the only way to keep up with where you were because the headlights at least illuminated features to the side instead of just reflecting back into your eyes.

 

One feature that I liked about many of the Conrail units was that the ditch lights weren't connected to the headlight switch. If need be, you could turn the high mounted headlight off while keeping the low mounted ditch lights on in order to ease a lot of the reflected light in the fog.

I worked on the NS Pittsburgh Division, and we frequently ran in thick fog between Johnstown and Altoona.  The cab signals were a nice extra layer of safety in those conditions, but as Big Jim said, running on a restricting signal in the fog was enough to give you a headache.  It would be very easy to lose track of where you are when you can't see past the front of the engine.