Steam & Excursion > Ouch! What A Bad Day On An SP Cab Forward Looks Like!

One day in the late 1940's Richard Thomas was roaming through the deadline of locomotives in the Roseville, CA yards and he came across this sight of SP #4231 after she had suffered a serious collision. The force of the impact did some serious damage to the cab and pilot of the big articulated engine.

While the cab forward design offered the crews some great visibility over that found in conventional steam locomotives, the crew also took the full brunt of any frontal collisions that the engines became involved in.

Not much is known about the details of this wreck. We do know that #4231 was repaired and returned to service and was not retired til the mid 1950's.



Martin

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Didn't notice the mess under the cab at first, but wow what a mess. Hope the crew came out ok, that days look like a very bad day.

Nathan

Wonder what the heck it hit or what hit it? Logs? Looks like it had it in for the Engineer. Wow!

Anybody figured out where this is?

Martin, It appears that this accident may have occurred as late as 1954. See the ICC accident report No. 3559 on the DOT Special Collections site. If this is indeed the same accident then it occurred in Davis on February 24, 1954. I have attached the description of the accident from the report.

Cheers,
Jack

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Jack, that looks like the same accident. The dates on the Thomas negatives are often off and this looks like one of those times.

I will correct the date. Thanks for filling in the details of the wreck It is not surprising that someone was killed in the cab.

Martin

Sad, too bad that someone had to lose their life.

Nathan

LoggerHogger Wrote:

> While the cab forward design offered the crews
> some great visibility over that found in
> conventional steam locomotives, the crew also took
> the full brunt of any frontal collisions that the
> engines became involved in.

I wonder if the risk was any lower in a conventional "cab behind" locomotive, where the open back wall of the cab might let in the tender's load of coal (on a coal burner, of course) or even the tender itself as the train behind shoved it forward, crushing everything between it and the firebox door.

I'm glad you posted the photo, but the thread title is a little too lighthearted considering someone was violently killed in the collision.

Knowing that, the photo is very sobering.

May I suggest that when the post title was created, the outcomes of the report that arises in a later posting was not known to the OP.

Mike

Michael McInerney
Marion, South Australia,

Exactly.

Martin

mmciau Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> May I suggest that when the post title was
> created, the outcomes of the report that arises in
> a later posting was not known to the OP.
>
> Mike


Good point. I didn't connect the dots well enough before posting.