Two on the ground at BNSF Eola yard.

[eolafan]

On Saturday I encountered for the first time an actual derailment of two of the three GP units used by BNSF in the "west yard" at Eola (actually Aurora, IL).  The third unit was still on the rails and was used by the large crew there to help re-rail the two units that went on the ground.  The whole process took approximately two hours to complete with "re-railers" and was quite interesting and impressive to me.  Photo below of the three units during the re-railing (photo was taken by Nick Hart and credit goes to him for a fine job).

 

[switch7frg]

 Did they swerve to avoid  or prevent an accident ??

[Deggesty]

switch7frg

 Did they swerve to avoid  or prevent an accident ??

Obviously, this is what happened, since you can do things in a yard that are utterly impossible out on the road

I was not drinking coffee or anything else, so my keyboard was safe.

[106crewchief]

Looks like they may have run over power de-rail on the lead

[eolafan]

106crewchief

Looks like they may have run over power de-rail on the lead

That was my first thought as the derail was right under the middle unit when I arrived on the scene and the crew needed to have the "lead" unit (the one still in bluebonnet scheme) haul the other two beyond the derail before beginning the rerailing process.  By the way, the derail you see here is not powered but has always been manually operated.

[BaltACD]

Derails work!   It is amazing the number of T&E crews that challenge that statement.

[mudchicken]

The good unit fed the bad units to 'da alligator.

Somewhere, a trainmaster/ road foreman is getting served a good dose of humble pie when they encounter the roadmster

 

Ain't gravity neat?

[zugmann]

BaltACD

Derails work!   It is amazing the number of T&E crews that challenge that statement.

Isn't it a FRA reg that they have to be tested every 30 days....?