Western Railroad Discussion > Cascade 500 Derails at Tacoma

About noon today northbound Cascade 500 derailed on a switch just outside the passenger station. I would assume no injuries, it was likely not moving too fast. Only the Power car came off the rails, it picked a switch. Both trucks on the ground. By 3:30 Hulcher was getting close to getting it back on the rails.

Freights backed up in both directions, will be a a busy night tonight.

First shot is a telephoto, sorry for the distortion.

There were so many guys there, I thought maybe they were going to lift by muscle power alone. We have people from BNSF, Talgo, Amtrak, Hulcher and a guy from UP wanting to know why his trains were being delayed.

The third shot shows the lead truck of the power car coming to rest on a switch motor.

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It appears the Plan A was to uncouple the Cab Car and then get the power car back on the rails. When I heard the first clank of the uncoupling lever, I though "yeah right, that's going to come apart!". After several guys took their shot at uncoupling, the plan was to roll the whole train back and maybe get the lead truck more level and in line with the cab car. Each time they stopped, someone yanked on the uncoupling lever to no avail.

Plan be involved turning large pieced of wood in to toothpicks, which required some crawling under the power car.

By the time I had to leave, the power car substantially more level and getting close to being re-railed. I'll post an update later.

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Last two illustrate the nerves some of these guys have.

Without a vest on the first one, this would look really bad.

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Those are great shots! Nice work. By the way, I counted nine white hats and nine non-white. I guess each worker gets a supervisor.

Could you tell how they did the lifts? The body of the Talgo car hangs, suspended, from a point above the door. If they were lifting on the body of the car it would seem that the wheels whould be suspended from that top point. I don't remember ever seeing a point marked on the cars that say "lift here."

jb

Someone already did a head count, but I noticed the same thing. It looks like they had the proper ratio, 1:1. That helps things, as then one worker doesn't have two supervisors giving conflicting orders. I too caught the part about the UP man wanting to know why his trains were being delayed. Maybe Amtrak should take a leason, and send one of their people to the UP everyday to check on 14.

Stan

When they did the lift between the power car and the first "business class" car, the dragged a cable underneath the truck and lifted. Unfortunately, I had to leave about that time and they moved the Hulcher sidewinders in a such a way that the view was blocked (good time to leave).

About 6:30 this evening there were 4 cascade trainsets in downtown Tacoma. #500, to northbounds and a southbound. I imagine that hasn't happened too often.

Later, my son and I stopped by the station and found #500 sitting in front of the building. An unofficial comment by a never to be identified railroad worker, indicated track work was the culprit. It was also said that the power car and the first revenue car would be out of service for a while.

As far as the count goes, at one point I counted 35, somewhat less than half were wearing orange helmets. And most interestingly, most of the work, especially under car, was being performed by the guys in the white hats. One guy in an orange had, seemed to be in charge of all the moves. Go figure!

Here's my last shot on the subject. A couple of Amtrak employees under the lead truck of the power car, inspecting and disconnecting airlines and such.

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DelMonteX Said

"Later, my son and I stopped by the station and found #500 sitting in front of the building. An unofficial comment by a never to be identified railroad worker, indicated track work was the culprit. It was also said that the power car and the first revenue car would be out of service for a while."

This raise the question what has happend to the Talgo units damaged in Portland earlier this year?

ST2-K

st2k Wrote:
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> This raise the question what has happend to the
> Talgo units damaged in Portland earlier this
> year?

The four damaged cars were all at the coach yard in Seattle. A few months ago, two of them left, presumably via truck. The remaining two are still at the coach yard.

This isn't the first time a Talgo has derailed on a switch. Several years ago before the current "bat wings" versions went into service one of the Spanish Talgo sets derailed on a switch leaving Pacific Central Station in Vancouver BC. The power car did a similar move and as I recall was suspended in the air between the F40 and the rest of the train. It was an odd sight.

cp1400

I hope the 500 isn't the same trainset that is supposed to be used for the 510 to Vancouver, BC today, because I really don't want to get bustituted.

If the power car will be out of service for awhile, I wonder if they will finally use the spare power car that's been parked at Holgate for many years now, along with a spare Bistro and baggage car. You can see the spares in Google Earth in photots that are at least a couple of years old.

The two coaches that were damaged in the PDX derailment are still there, and don't look like they've been worked on much.

Here's some photo's of the spares and the damaged coaches from 06_25_06.

A website also mentions two spare accessible coaches, numbers 7520a, and 7521a. Has anyone seen these coaches recently? I can't ever recall seeing them at Holgate.

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Might these missing coaches be the reason I've recently heard a few Talgo sets pass defect detectors with 19 axles instead of the customary 22?

-Dave

Was it in push mode? I think a cabage car that's 70+tons and the pore one axle cars with steering all tyed to gether just didn't want to go Threw the switch?? Is it not the second time it happened in the same way?

benthere Wrote:
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> A website also mentions two spare accessible
> coaches, numbers 7520a, and 7521a. Has anyone
> seen these coaches recently? I can't ever recall
> seeing them at Holgate.

7520 and 7521 were spare when the original four 12-car sets were delivered. Some time ago two of the 12-car sets (Mt Rainier and Mt Baker) were made up to 13-car sets by adding one of these spares to each.
The other two original sets were made up to 13 cars in November 2004 using cars from the fifth set (this was the blue "Las Vegas" set). This fifth set had 14 cars, and now has 12 and has become Mt Adams.

Geoff