Snow Action

[Anonymous]

I would like to know if there are any notable train accidents in the snow in the time between 1910 and 1970 (well, the classic era). Every information is good, so feel free to post anything you know about train desasters in the snow or some special winter rides you remember......

[West Coast S]

In 1952 the City of San Francisco was stranded at Yuba Pass on the Donner crossing due to a snow slide and sub-zero conditions until rescue crews could relieve the passengers after about thirteen days of entrapment , retrieving the equiptment proved much more difficuilt, a rotary engineer lost his life, when a slide swept the rotary he was operating, down the mountain side as the SP attempted to cut a path to the stranded train. The nearby highway was also impassable and local ranchers hiked to the location to provide some measure of relief to the stranded passengers and crew.

Dave

[GN-Rick]

In 1910, at Wellington, Washington, the Great Northern experienced what
is still considered to be the worst avalanche disaster involving a train in
US history. In the early morning of March 1, 1910, after having been stranded
at Wellington for a week due to exceptionally heavy snow conditions, two
trains-# 25, the Spokane-Seattle local passenger train and # 27, the GN's
Fast Mail, were struck by a snowslide and destroyed. This avalanche was
estimated to have been a 2000 feet wide, a half mile long and rougly 15 feet
deep. Both trains, 3 steam locomotives, four 3-phase electric locomotives,
a rotary snowplow, the superintendant's private car, several boxcars and
some crew shacks and the engine shed were all swept down the mountainside
and into the valley below. 96 lives were lost, many of them passengers
and many others being railroad workers. It took the GN another 10 days to
reopen the line over Stevens Pass, the conditions were so terrible.
The locomotives were salvaged over the next few months, but the passenger
and mail cars were so demolished that they were left there with only the
trucks being recovered. One can still see recognizable wreckage of the
trains at the site today. I travel there at least once a year to hike the old
roadbed and walk among the debris, having had a lifelong fascination
with the area, as well as the GN Railway.