Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts

Monday, March 12, 2018

POTD - A Southern Stranger In the Snowstorm

We are less than a week away from St. Patrick's Day, when folks celebrate the world famous Scot by pretending they're Irish for the day. It's also the last holiday before the first day of spring, and springtime in the Rockies is famous for its weather! March is typically the snowiest month of the year for most locations in Colorado including Denver, when and where today's Photo of the Day was taken.

Photo of the Day: BUFFIE
BNSF crews on March 23, 2016, are finding just how hard it can be to find the points in the snow while cleaning the switches of ice. Failing to do so can result in a derailment and a headache for everyone involved, especially if the derailment is in a yard as busy as the one at the Engine Servicing Facility in Denver. The snow almost covers the unusual herald of Norfolk Southern 8345, a GE-8 diesel electric much more accustomed to sunnier climes like those of South Carolina.

I wish I could say I saw this photo first and beat everyone else to the punch in honoring it. Alas, no, it already received the coveted People's Choice Award from RailPictures.Net. Nevertheless, give honor to whom honor is due, and today's photographer, BUFFIE, is certainly worthy, considering he nearly lost a finger pressing the release to capture this stunning photo. Well, maybe he might have risked losing a finger. Frostbite can be very subtle. 😉 Regardless, considering the scene and the Norfolk Southern locomotive, the photo has a once-in-a-lifetime feel to it, and I'm glad he was there to capture the moment. ⚒

Friday, March 25, 2016

On This Date: Runaway Coal Train Pushed By Wind For Nearly 100 MIles

Wind damage is no stranger to the
northeastern 
Colorado plains.
 
Photo: Sherrif Nestor, Lincoln
 County Sheriffs Office
This weekend marks a mostly forgotten, strange-but-true event that I find pretty remarkable. Fully 132 years ago, residents out on the eastern plains of Colorado and southwest Nebraska were experiencing a wind storm of such severity that, though it had no vortex or definable center, it did damage worthy of a tornado. It tore the roof off of Akron's roundhouse of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad. However, what was truly remarkable were the events of a couple hours on a Wednesday afternoon, March 23rd, 1884.

What follows is verbatim from Trains & Travel's August 1953 issue from a 1934 Railway Age article retelling of what the Lincoln, Nebraska State Journal reported (reprinted by the 1884 Railroad Gazette).
"It will be remembered that on Thursday March 26, there was a wind which amounted almost to a tornado. At Akron, it unroofed the roundhouse and did other damage. About 5 o'clock that evening, the wind, at its strongest, started a train of eight box cars loaded with coal that was standing on the side track. This eight-car train ran through the split switch and on eastward over the main track. The track was nearly level, but some distance this side it is downgrade, and the wind was so strong that it moved the cars more rapidly than passenger-train speed.

"The operator at Akron noticed the runaway train as it broke loose and sent the alarm down the line. Everything was sidetracked and the crazy train had the right of way. The Cannon Ball train westward was sidetracked just in time. Marvelous as it may seem, those runaway cars ran 100 miles, passing eight stations, over a track which is for a great part of the distance almost perfectly level, with no propelling power but the wind and their own inertia. They ran the hundred miles in less than three hours, station agents and others holding their breath with awe as the cars whirled by at high speed. They passed Haiger [69 miles from Akron] at about 40 miles an hour and on the downgrade east of Akron are estimated to have run 20 miles in 18 minutes. At Benkelman, 95 miles from Akron, a freight engine was run out following the runaway train, and after a chase of a few miles, closed the gap between itself and the freight cars, and was coupled to them." 
Notes
⚒ - The difference in days of the week, specifically Wednesday vs. Thursday, is likely because of an error of someone along the line counting the days from 1884 to 1953 to calculate the day of the week, quite possibly forgetting that 1900 was not a leap year. If it did occur on March 26, 1884, it was a Wednesday.

⚔ - Because it was prior to the Railroad Safety Appliance Act, passed in 1894 and effective 1900, it's not readily known if the rolling stock on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad, which was the subsidiary of the CB&Q for the railroad in Colorado and Nebraska, were equipped with Janney automatic couplers, the rough predecessor to the standard coupler used today. If not, although a link-and-pin coupling might be difficult, mating a connection would still be possible, especially if it happened at a slower speed like 10 miles per hour.

Map of the Route


The idea of a runaway train, even 132 years ago, being pushed 100 miles by the wind might sound like a bunch of hokum at first, but a railcar with steel wheels on steel rails has a lot less rolling resistance than one might encounter with say a trailer or a wagon. Despite the characterization of the line as flat and relatively straight, the entire distance is mostly downgrade, losing 2,137 feet in altitude over 93.6 miles, yielding an average of -0.43% grade. I'm not sure if that's enough to keep a car rolling on it's own, but if straight-line winds of 60 or 80 MPH pushed on something broad and tall enough, it's more than likely to move along at quite a clip. Covering 20 miles in 18 minutes, 8 boxcars loaded with coal would be moving faster than 60 MPH! Imagine watching that roll through Yuma!

Is it possible it could happen again? Yes. Is it probable? I believe if given the right conditions, it would be probable, but not as likely today because of the difference in size and use of high side gondolas, along with higher emphasis on securing loads for safety.◊

Monday, October 6, 2014

POTD - Pumpkins Under a Wicked Sky

Note from Steve: this marks the 600th post to Colorado Railroads!
Photo of the Day: Kevin Morgan
How could POTD not lead off with a Pumpkin shot? It's October! And early fall is no time to let your guard down with respect to bad weather Last year proved that well and good. A westbound BNSF manifest is stopped at Leyden on the Moffat Route in front of an eastern horizon with a color that might just give you shivers if you were heading that way.

Speaking of color, even if it wasn't power-short BNSF providing no shortage of color (orange predominantly), it still would be a profoundly colorful shot. Dark blue, gold, white, red, green, and all are mirrored in the train itself! Manifests, pumpkins and dark skies. Worthy, indeed!

On a side note, Kevin Morgan says about this train,
The westbound BNSF manifest was stopped on the main at Leyden because the head end had lost its comm link with the rear DPU. The conductor walked back to the DPU to try to get the link to re-establish. It was determined that the comm radio on the lead unit was broken, so a new unit had to come out of Denver to rescue the train.
Those darn GEs!  You'd almost forget that at one time GE made radios.◊