It was the later evening of April 6, 1974, in Cajon Pass in Southern California, and DDA40X UP 6903 passed a red intermediate signal because they had heard the train ahead had gotten a green signal. Moving at around 28 M.P.H., the train rounded the next curve and to the crew’s horror there was a second train stopped ahead! The engineer put the train in emergency and laid on the floor. UP 6903 slowed to about 23 M.P.H. but impacted the Santa Fe caboose that went right over the engineer’s head and sheered off the whole cab! Remember, the engineer was lying on the floor. The head brakeman, well, he didn’t make it
George Cockle years ago, in one of his published books on UP (I think on DDA40X’s) had two photos of mine about that wreck.
We are approaching the 50th anniversary of that wreck!
Some railroaders assume things. And some pay the supreme price for their sad error!
Railroaders are not the only ones that make errors. In the last three and a half months, I’ve gotten three bad, defective, very expensive Nikon cameras. All had to be returned! Like trainmen that do stupid things, camera makers that keep doing stupid things will ultimately pay a very heavy price as word gets around quicker and quicker …
The problem is that the first-rate cameras that I had (Argus C-3 and Canon AE-1) and currently have (Canon A-1) are no longer in production.
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