Western Railroad Discussion > Alaska Railroad Derailed in Avalanche Debris

Fortunately the crew was ok in this one...

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2023/01/17/alaska-railroad-employees-safe-after-train-derailed-by-avalanche-near-girdwood/

I took the train from Girdwood to Seward in the Summer of 2016 and can attest to the steepness of some of the chutes running out of the Chugach into the Turnagain Arm.

 

Avalanche threats are serious business up there. I am an ex Alaska RR employee and have Hi-Railed the line in winter between Anchorage and Seward. It is a whole other experience.

Kerry Brookman was killed in an avalanche slide north of Girdwood and the location s named for him now. In 2009 we lost a train out there and I was "in the loop that night" with phone calls at home after work. It is dangerous. When out in slide zone territory, defined by timetable and bulletins one had to wear "peeps" when out there in case you were buried they'd be able to find you. We had a guy named Dave Hamre who was the avalanche god. If Dave said "don't go", you didn't go. If he blessed your transit through the zones it was usually conditional on "call me at MP......before you go any further" and he wanted to know you were safely through. I think that night in 2009 Hamre was overruled and the train got in trouble.  There are hiking trails high up the mountain sides, and one time I got in a little trouble above Bird Creek just trying to hike across a slide path in summer due to the loose steeply sloping gravel.

I also used to drive that section of highway paralleling the railroad several times a week. Beautiful but dangerous at times. 

Looking at my old track chart, that area around MP 71.5 is designated "Slide Zone", it is about 3 miles south of Girdwood at Kern. About 43 miles south of Anchorage. Just south of Kern is Portage where the lines fork off to Whittier and Seward. This train would have been a Whittier train, probably a Whittier shuttle working a barge unload operation. My old TT says it is 25mph max for freight and passenger (2006). I do not know what might have changed since.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/19/23 05:20 by train1275.

Would  some of the rest of the train derail as well from the sudden stop up front?

dougd Wrote:
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> Would  some of the rest of the train derail as
> well from the sudden stop up front?

It all depends. The engineer probably dumped the air several seconds before impact that would have kept the cars from running into the locomotives too hard when they hit the snow bank. The locomotives did push thier way quite deep into the avalanche, so the actual impact was cushioned quite a bit. That would have kept the cars from derailing.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Thanks Ted for that informative answer
D.

Glad the crew is ok, that train ended up a lot deeper in the snow from the photos than I expected.

Nathan