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Locomotive Cabs, and Crew Safety in Collisions

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It will be interesting to see a reconstruction showing the individual events of this collision.  Obviously one or more cars rode up and over the lead locomotive.  Eventually, they fell off and landed alongside the train.  However, there is no proof that all of the cars (I count three) alongside the train actually rode up and over the locomotive.  One or two of them may have simply been displaced directly to the side by the force of the collision.  <o:p></o:p> Looking at the photos, it looks like the fourth photo shows the first car that was displaced by the collision.  This may have been the last car of the work train, and it may have either rode up the engine, and fell off of the top; or it may have just been displaced sideways and tipped to the side in the clear.      <o:p></o:p> Particularly interesting are the two cars nearly side by side lying alongside the train.  If these rode up and over the locomotive, they must have telescoped by one overriding the other at some point prior to landing where they did.    If these two cars went over the engine one by one without first telescoping together, they would not be lying side by side on the ground.  Although, I suppose it is possible that one car rode up the engine, and the second car rode up over the first as the continued over the top of the engine.  <o:p></o:p> Looking at the photos it is not possible to tell the order of events.  The cars have been shuffled like cards.  Just ahead of the locomotive, the flatcars are stacked three high.  It seems rather surprising that throughout the progression of this collision, the cars persisted in overriding each other and overriding the locomotive rather than jackknifing at some point.   <o:p></o:p> I would call this a flatcar telescope wreck.  Telescoping was the dreaded outcome of passenger train collisions in the pre-1900 era.  Collision impacts would simply cause one car to burst through the end of the next car, and run right into its interior.  Two cars suddenly occupy the space of one like the collapsing of a star watcher’s telescope.  Of course the people riding in the car that receives the intruding car are subject to the most unfathomable horrors.  Telescope wrecks became a thing of the past as safety innovations led the way into the 1900s.    <o:p></o:p> In the sense of these historic telescoping wrecks, flat cars cannot telescope.  One flat car cannot get inside of another.  But flatcars can overrun each other easier than any other form of rolling stock.
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