RAILROADS OF MICHIGAN KEWEENAW PENINSULA CIRCA 1966

[Euclid]

Here is some of the thread from 2012.  Apparently that link to the accident report no longer takes you there:

 

 

Disastrous Runaway Freight Train

Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:13 PM

 

December 14, 1951, Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic Railroad had a catastrophic runaway on the steep grade heading north into L’Anse, Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior in the Michigan Upper Peninsula.

 

One Baldwin road switcher was on the head end of 22 cars and a caboose that had to ascend the grade.  A 2-8-0 steam locomotive was coupled behind the caboose as a pusher.  What is amazing is how quickly things can go wrong.  Fifteen-hundred feet from the top of the seven-mile hill, both locomotives began to slip because of what was at first thought to be sticking brakes.  So they decided to cut the road engine off and run ahead to sand the rails.  The helper engine had the independent brake set and steam in the cylinders as a holding precaution.  It was ten below zero with freshly fallen snow.

 

When the road engine returned from sanding, he coupled up and pumped up the air.  When the brakes on the cars released, the cars immediately started running backwards, shoving the steam helper on sliding wheels.  The helper engineer quickly cut power to avoid flattening the locomotive drivers.  At first, the helper engineer thought the road engineer was intentionally shoving back to a better place to restart the train.  But soon he realized they were running away.  About that same instant, the engineer of the road engine dynamited the brakes, but something prevented the application so, away they went.

 

Both engineers tried to hold the runaway with their independent brakes, but it was no use.  They both also made several attempts to recharge the trainline and set the brakes, but complications prevented their success.  The grade averaged between 1.5% and 2.2% with one short stretch of 3.45%.  The main problem was a very sharp curve right at the bottom of the grade in L’Anse.  They quickly reached a speed too great to jump off.  Their speed was reported to have reached 70 mph.  Some said 90 mph.  In any case, it took them seven minutes to make seven miles, and that included the gradual acceleration from the top. 

 

Two brakemen went out from the rear end to set handbrakes.  The leading brakeman reached the fifth car from the caboose, but could not cross it because it was carrying a loose, slippery load of slab wood.  So he got down on the stirrup of the car and decided he would wait to see if the cars derailed, and would jump only if they did.  As he approached the curve at the bottom of the grade, suddenly the car he was hanging from just seemed to abruptly stop, and he was torn away from it and skidded along the roadbed.

 

The jolt of the car that the brakeman had been riding was in reaction to a derailment that began when the steam locomotive hit the curve running tender-first and jumped the rails.  The entire train derailed, demolishing the steamer, caboose, and 22 cars.  The road engine stayed upright but derailed with relatively little damage.  The fireman of the steamer and the second brakeman riding the cars were killed.  They said that, with the intense cold and the muffling effect of the deep snow, the speeding runaway cars were completely silent except for the clicking of the rail joints.

 

Here is a link to the accident report, which goes into fascinating detail about a series of air brake procedural errors including both engineers making moves that canceled out each other as they both attempted to charge the trainline:

 

 http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/Wrecks/ICCReports/DSS&A-LanseMI-1951.pdf

 

 

 

Here are links to five photos of the aftermath:

 

http://www.baragacountyhistoricalmuseum.com/photohistory/picture_lanse_1950s_train_wreck1.JPG

 

 

http://www.baragacountyhistoricalmuseum.com/photohistory/picture_lanse_1950s_train_wreck2.JPG

 

 

http://www.baragacountyhistoricalmuseum.com/photohistory/picture_lanse_1950s_train_wreck4.JPG

 

 

 

http://www.baragacountyhistoricalmuseum.com/photohistory/picture_lanse_1950s_train_wreck5.JPG

 

 

http://www.baragacountyhistoricalmuseum.com/photohistory/picture_lanse_1950s_train_wreck6.JPG

 

 

 

My source of information for this account is coverage in SOO, volume 33, numbers 2 and 3; the above-linked accident report, and various Internet references.

 

 

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Anonymous

Member since

April 2003

305,205 posts       Posted by Anonymous on Thursday, March 15, 2012 3:54 PM

According to the report, trains crews had grown complacent in dealing with trains stopped on L’Anse Hill.  It was customary to ignore the rule requiring that hand brakes be set if the road locomotive were uncoupled from the train.  As in the case of this runaway, the crew simply would rely mainly on the air brakes holding the cars after the road engine cut off.

 

Interestingly, when they cut the road engine off, they did not dump the air in the train, which would have set the brakes to their maximum pressure.  Instead, the engineer made a 20-pound set, and then they closed the anglecock on the first car when they cut off, a process known as “bottling” the air (as BaltACD mentioned).  In doing that, the trainline is left partially charged.   I am not sure what the reasoning would be for doing that in this case.  One effect would be that it would take less time to pump up the trainline when they tied back on to resume.

 

But in any case, cutting off and leaving the airbrakes to hold the cars on a grade is unreliable because the brakes can leak off.  How long they hold depends on the cars.  Some cars will leak off faster than others.  I would assume that the crew felt no danger from the possibility of the brakes leaking off because they only intended to leave the cars for maybe 5-10 minutes. 

 

And they had a backup precaution for holding the train by virtue of the helper locomotive on the hind end holding the train with the independent brakes.  The engineer also had steam pressurizing the cylinders, which had the effect of creating a static forward push against the cars.  So what could possibly go wrong? 

 

The typical runaway principle is that, as speed increases, braking friction decreases.  So if a trains starts to run away because of inadequate braking, it is very hard to increase braking fast enough to overtake the loss of friction.  It takes time to pump air to fully charge the reservoirs, so the brakes can be applied harder.  And yet, the cars are gaining speed, and the faster they go, the more braking force will be needed to slow them down.  

 

The term, runaway is perfect.  Not only do the brakes fail to hold, but also they become less effective as the speed increases.  So the cars accelerate from the pull of gravity as they escape the holding ability of the brakes.  They run away.

 

In the case of this wreck, the runaway began the instant the airbrakes released.  It began even before either the two locomotives started to apply power to the train.  And just the instant the cars began to move backwards, their force was enough to drag both locomotives with sliding wheels on sanded rails.

 

At that point, the road engineer dumped all the air in the trainline, which puts the brakes into full emergency.  At such a low speed, this should have stopped the train, but apparently, the car reservoirs were not fully charged, so the emergency application was not as effective as it should have been.   This left them with insufficient brake friction to stop the acceleration and begin slowing down.  So, it became a contest between the increasing speed reducing brake friction and pumping air to reset the brakes at a higher degree of friction.   The increasing speed won that contest.

 

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Anonymous

Member since

April 2003

305,205 posts       Posted by Anonymous on Friday, March 16, 2012 4:52 PM

 

Actually, this was the fifth disastrous runaway freight train on L’Anse Hill.  The first one, in June 1891, destroyed the depot.  A second runaway in October 1891, spared the depot because none had yet been built to replace the one destroyed in June.  Late in 1891, a new depot was built to replace the one destroyed in June the previous year.  Then in January 1892, a third runaway occurred, which seriously damaged the new depot, but did not destroy it. However, it did destroy the Falls River bridge.

 

Then in September 1900, a fourth disastrous runaway destroyed the new depot and seriously damaged the Falls River bridge.  In 1906, the DSS&A built a new depot about ½ mile west, which would keep it out of range of derailing runaways on the hill.  Then, in December 1951, the new depot location was tested by the fifth runaway on the hill, which is detailed in the first post.      

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Randy Stahl

Member since

June 2004

From: roundhouse

2,747 postsPosted by Randy Stahl on Saturday, March 17, 2012 5:58 AM

The L'Anse hill was neat , in SOO and WC days there was always a cut of empty hopper cars with cast iron shoes for the trip down the hill , 100% retainers on high pressure and it was still an adventure.

 

Randy

[rcdrye]

If my (sometimes fuzzy) memory serves me, L'Anse hill had a 3.45% grade.

[Euclid]

I first got up to the Copper Country on a trip to Hancock in 1963.  Quincy Mining had been shut down since 1945.  They retained the entire physical plant in case the industry rebounded.   It took many more trips up there to grasp the entire picture.  It was like finding a lost civilization. 

 

Here is another video by Clint Jones covering the same operations as the first video, but ranging out from the Houghton/Hancock location:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6zy9Jx65M4

 

Clint’s videos were apparently made by hand held 8mm cameras, which can be quite rough when taken from a moving train.  But they do capture the history in a large area of lost history.

 

At the time location starting at 9:45, it shows the railroad line  descending  “Lanse Hill” with Keweenaw Bay showing at the bottom of the grade.  The grade is 7 miles long, so this opening view is shown near the bottom of the grade.  The commentator points out the “Ford Switch” branching off to the right near the depot at Lanse, which is at the bottom of the grade.  

 

In 2012, I made a thread here about a runaway train on that grade.  Here is that thread:

 

https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/203941.aspx

 

 

The train had been headed up the grade and stopped at the top to cut off the (Baldwin diesel) engine and run it light for a ways to clear the rails of ice and snow.  There was also a 2-8-0 steam helper on the rear end of the train. 

 

A cascade of problems lead to the entire train running away backward with insufficient air.  In the thread I made in 2012, there are several photographs of the wreckage from the derailment that began as the train was entering that curve to the left, passing over the Falls River Bridge, just before passing the depot. 

 

When the video begins by looking down the last mile or so of the grade, one can sense the treachery in the steep descent.  The train reached 60-70 mph as it approached the bottom of the grade.  There had been four other runaways on this grade prior to this one in the 1951. 

 

The link to the 2012 thread shows several photos of the wreck which included the entire train.  Also, I posted the some information on the other 4 wrecks that occurred on this same grade over the years. 

[Euclid]

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[MidlandMike]

Thanks, I have always been interestedin the railroads of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I didn't get to the Keewenaw until after the Copper Range was abandoned, and MILW passenger service to Calumet was gone.

[Euclid]

Clint Jones worked for the Copper Range RR operating out of Houghton Michigan, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, in Upper Michigan.  In the late 1960s, he organized the Keweenaw Central RR as a tourist operation with historic rolling stock and a 2-8-0 steam locomotive.  The train ran on Copper Range RR track from Calumet to Lake Linden.  Here is a video of a movie made by Clint showing operations on the Copper Range RR and the Soo Line circa 1966-67.  In that time frame, the Milwaukee Road was running a passenger train from Chicago to Calumet, MI

 

This video features shots of that train in the snow.  I had only seen that train once, and that was pulling up the 4% grade northbound out of Hancock, MI at maybe 10-15 mph.  So I am surprised to see that train running so fast on that track as seen in the video. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBJ2ARWUc84