Nostalgia & History > A NP Freight Rammed the End of a UP Freight, 1955

This photo and caption are from the Oregon Historical Society's Photograph Collection.

TWISTED CARS ARE STREWN ALONG BENT TRACKS NEAR CENTRALIA, WA., N.P. FREIGHT HIT REAR OF U.P. FREIGHT [Graphic], 1955 August.
Call Number: 014182
Collection Type: Photographs Media type: Photograph
Database: OCLC-MARC Bibliographic (OCLC)


Note, the UP caboose is not in the picture. A Google Search found some additional photos on a Flickr site if you are interested. I searched "Centralia, WA. wreck 1955".

Marty Bernard

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This appears to be backwards... See "Southern Pacific" on the back of the semi-trailer to the right.

mwbridgwater Wrote:
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> This appears to be backwards... See "Southern
> Pacific" on the back of the semi-trailer to the
> right.

Position of ladders confirms that.

-John

Messy, messy, messy.

> > This appears to be backwards... See "Southern
> > Pacific" on the back of the semi-trailer to the
> > right.
>
> Position of ladders confirms that.

Perhaps the collision was so violent that it turned the trailer inside out?

...sorry, that was uncalled for.

- E.O.

First thing that caught my eye was the reversed NP logo. Yes, this was certainly a mess. I would guess there were probably one or more fatalities?

A couple of adjustments to the image.

Slight enlargement and horizontal flip.

Bob

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Man, seems like nobody likes the UP! ;-)

Those F9 units are boiler equipped for passenger service.

Posted from Windows Phone OS 7

fbe Wrote:
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> Those F9 units are boiler equipped for passenger
> service.
>
> Posted from Windows Phone OS 7

NP was very frugal with the use of its locomotives. All passenger locomotives were maintained at Livingston, MT and after servicing were put into a rotation starting in Livingston of something like 16 days that saw them assigned to virtually every passenger train on the NP during that rotation. While the rotation was modified from time to time, it was common in the 1950's to utilize passenger power on Seattle-Portland freight number 680 (the NP train in the picture that collided with the UP train), in the late evening, then returned on another freight early the next morning before being assigned to an outbound passenger train from Seattle the next day.

Incidentally, I looked up more information about this accident and found that amazingly, there were no fatalities. The UP crew was switching cars and were away from their caboose, and the NP crew, who apparently had fallen asleep, managed to survive as well.