Maine Eastern Railroad

[roadrat]

Just a little story I read today, I thought I would share it.

Bill[:D]

Maine man chases, halts string of runaway passenger cars


ROCKLAND, Maine — Roy Allen was working on some equipment outside Chemrock's small processing plant here Wednesday morning when he saw the Maine Eastern excursion train coming, according to an article in the Bangor Daily News. Allen turned to a co-worker and said, "That's funny. They didn't blow the horn today."

When the five passenger cars reached the Buttermilk Lane crossing in nearby Thomaston at 10 a.m., they slowed, then stopped. That was when Allen realized there was no locomotive pushing them.

"Then she started to roll back," he recalled. So Allen, 38, started running toward them. Once alongside, he managed to board the cars and halt the train about a mile from the railroad yard.

On his first attempt, Allen leaped onto the last car as it rolled back toward Rockland. He found the brake and yanked as hard as he could, over and over again. It didn't seem to slow the cars much. Fearing a derailment, Allen recalled thinking, "Man, I better get off here while I can. It wasn't just barely moving; it was moving real fast.”

So he jumped off.

Then he had second thoughts. What if it kept rolling through Rockland and derailed? In a flash, he was running again. About an eighth-of-a-mile later, he jumped aboard the moving passenger cars a second time.

The newspaper said Allen pulled on the rear car's brake, then on the front car brake. Since he works around freight cars at the Chemrock plant, which processes perlite, a rocklike glass used in construction, Allen was familiar with their braking systems, although the passenger-car brakes were different from the "wheel type" he was used to on freight cars, he said. "This was a hand crank."

Allen yanked on the brake "25 jacks before the brakes tightened up," he said. "It was all I could do to stop it," he said. "It just don't stop like a car."

Luckily for the crew on the Maine Eastern locomotive headed down the track in pursuit of the runaway cars, Allen’s efforts were successful.

"If I hadn't stopped it, it might have hit head-on with the engine," Allen said.

"We had some excitement," Jon Shute, Maine Eastern's general manager, said Wednesday.

Preliminary findings indicate the cause may have been an ineffective hand brake, he said. Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Warren Flatau said his agency had an investigation under way. Violations of rail safety regulations can lead to enforcement actions or fines against the railroad, he said.

According to Shute, an employee was cleaning the cars when they began to move. She jumped off the train and promptly reported the incident. Dispatchers contacted Thomaston police, who sent officers to Buttermilk Lane and other crossings down the line.

The train had passed through the Pleasant Street West crossing without incident despite no horn-blowing. Generally, the crossing lights are activated automatically by the cars, Flatau said.

In the end, Allen was just glad no one was hurt, he said.

"That was my first train ride," he said.

Maine Eastern, a subsidiary of the Morristown & Erie Railroad in New Jersey, operates 90 miles of former Maine Central trackage from Brunswick to Rockland and Augusta.