chad thomas wrote:Not all that unusual. I know of an SP wreck where several cars were burried. Several years later they were dug up and removed. I also head about a UP wreck that involved a boxcar full of guns. The car was burried for fear the guns would be looted. The car was eventually dug up and removed too.
Burying wreckage from train wrecks used to be a pretty common practice. In the time when wreck equipment at the site of the wreck was a large Brownhoist railroad crane or several small cranes, and maybe some bulldozers.Railroads did their own remediation on wrecks and repairs. It was fast and dirty. Push the junk into a trench, and walk the heavy tracks over it and then burry it, This was before environmental awareness and R.J. Corman and Hulcher and other recovery specialists were really active and on-call to respond to wreck scenes.
Just west of Southhaven, Ms, in the early sixties was a wreck involving carloads of Booze and a carload of Browning Guns. Then up around Walnut Ridge, Ark, the MoPac buried a number of loaded auto racks. The story in both cases was that it was easier to claim a 100% loss than fool around with trying to work out the salvage.
Couldn't they get a crane and drag it back up the slope or even an Army chinook or something? it would be hard to bury that on the side of that hill IMO.
James, Brisbane Australia
Modelling AT&SF in the 90s
Up Willamette Pass, between Frazier and Cruzatte, there are lots of cars over the side. "From rust they came, to rust they shall return". I don't ever remember any being covered except the ones that went down the hill as part of a slide. For many years, starting about 1958 or 1959, the SP just let the wreckage lie where ever. In the mid-1970's, they started to clean the messes up.
High-line loggers are pretty good wreck removers. Just above Lakehead (Shasta Lake) about 1960 or so, the SP put the Advance Starpacer (#376)(later known as the LABRF) clean out into the middle of the Sacramento River. Three units were not even reachable by the Relief Outfit (wrecking crew). A local high-line logger came by and asked how much would they pay him to snake the units out of the river. The price was definately music to his ears, so in a few hours he had rigged a high-line and within 24 hours had all three F-7's out on dry land.
Around the same time frame, the SPS put several FA's into the Deschutes River near Maupin. To recover the crews bodies, they needed to pull the units up a 60 foot cut face in the rock --- along came the high-liners to the rescue.
RJ
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nanaimo73 wrote:PGE burried RS3 572 a few miles north of there back in August 1960.
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vsmith wrote:Holy Cow thats a hellova place for loco to end up.... I guess they can't take it down to the bottom without it splashing in the river? Is that a problem?
The Fraser is BC's major fisheries river, so not a good idea to send it into the river And it needs to be buried or removed or it may slide on its own into the river. Will be interesting to see how they do it. Lots of loggers nearby with steep ground experience, could use them
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Have fun with your trains
Where this is, the only option would be to cut it up into smaller chunks and haul it up to the track. Going down you are into the Fraser River. As seen from this photo, tough site to haul up.
CN Rail has applied for permission to bury what's left of a locomotive and rail car at the site of a fatal derailment near Lillooet in the B.C. Interior.
Two crew members were killed when the engine plunged off the track and went down a steep mountain slope two weeks ago.
(CBC)
He said pulling the train out may not be a viable option, as lifting the locomotive up the steep bank would be too dangerous and there are environmental concerns about building a road from below.
But he said the burial proposal carries its own risks.
"There would be the need to move equipment down the bank in a safe manner to actually open up a hole, and then move the locomotive into it and then bury it over.
"So it's definitely a difficult process whatever they choose to do."
Wagner said he wants to ensure there are no oil, diesel and battery acid left on the engine before granting approval, but notes that the toxic fluids appear to have been burned off in the fire.
If the company can verify that there would be no environmental threat, Wagner will likely take the unusual step of approving the train burial within two or three weeks, he said.
The bodies of the two crew members — Tom Dodd and Don Faulkner — were recovered after the crash.
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