Nostalgia & History > ICG Head On Collision Oct. '79 due to open switch

A few weeks ago someone on the Passenger Board asked about this collision:

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,4479040,4479812#msg-4479812
I added my insights to that thread.

I have come across some Ken Lanovich pictures that someone else had scanned.
Unfortunately there is no date or other information on the slides.
I believe this is one (or two) of the units involved.
Please let me know if the 3000 was NOT in this wreck.

NTSB report here:

http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?db=DOT-RAILROAD&query=(select+4031

The link is a little funky but when you get there go the bottom of the page and click
on the Adobe icon. The report will pop up.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/18 16:14 by Englewood.

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I guess #3000 took the term "Nose Job" to a new level...

Also notice its assigned base location WAS Johnston Yard in Memphis.

From illinois-central.net:

"IC 3000 31480 5697-40 GP40 1966 WRECKED & SCRAPPED 79-80"



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/18 17:37 by bodkin6071.

A” “frame clearing” event for sure...

I was working for the ICG when this happened. I was in intermodal marketing and the freight train involved, #51, was our primary IM service from Chicago to Memphis and New Orleans.

The brakeman who was killed was the son of the head of the railroad's real estate department. The family, who lived in the area, heard of the wreck and were worried about their son. His brother said not to worry, the son was on the "Pigs" and they should be well gone by then. But the train was very late and in the way of Amtrak.

The family went to the wreck site and the deceased's brother ran ahead over a hill. He turned around and came back to his family and said: "It's the pigs". His brother/their son was dead.

The switch tender was 18 years old and a new hire. He broke down crying at the investigation. I heard he had been told to "Throw the switch after the passenger train goes by." The old IC suburban operation (Now Metra Electric) had been built and was operated separately from the through lines. But it was right next to the through lines. A suburban passenger train went by and the young man threw the switch as instructed. Now the guy giving the instructions wasn't considering the separate electric passenger line, but the 18 year old didn't know that. To give an instruction such as that is just plain stupid. To hang the wreck on an 18 year old switch tender was despicable.

I came to despise the honchos in the ICG operating department. They were a bunch of Good Ole Boys who rejected disciplined operations, schedules, and being competitive with trucking.

Greyhounds Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
To give an instruction such
> as that is just plain stupid. To hang the wreck
> on an 18 year old switch tender was despicable.

I was an 18 year old towerman and if I caused a wreck I expected to
be blamed for it. But I had a little comprehension of what I was
doing.

You expect the people that you are working with to be qualified on their
position. The train director position at the time was very busy, handling all
the traffic in the Chicago Terminal via the phone with all the towers. When
the company gives you a new person to work with (that you never get to meet in person)
you expect that he may be slow but not unqualified. You play with the cars you are dealt
with. You don't expect the new man to be essentially "off the street". It makes you wonder
what his OJT instructors were teaching him or if they didn't have the balls to tell the
boss this guy couldn't make it.

The local TM should have signed off on the switchtender before cutting him loose.
Unfortunately in terminal areas the TM's are mostly busy second guessing the YM
and everyone else instead of supervising.



>
> I came to despise the honchos in the ICG operating
> department. They were a bunch of Good Ole Boys
> who rejected disciplined operations, schedules,
> and being competitive with trucking.

I started with the ICG shortly after the accident. I had to leave
the sinking boat of the Rock Island. The lower level supervision in
the DS office was very good but the upper levels were following their
leader's ("Midas Muffler" Johnson) desire to trash the company. In later years
one of them went to Amtrak as superintendent and showed his ignorance there.

Englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The train director position at the time
> was very busy, handling all
> the traffic in the Chicago Terminal via the phone
> with all the towers.

..as was the B&OCT trick job. I have no doubt that we were busier than the IC Director. Among the things I had to learn before sitting in the chair at all was talking on the phone. Among the lessons, never tell someone to do something that will occur at a later time after something else happens. Unless the after train was passing at the moment, the correct instruction was call me after ---- is by. Another was always a positive ID of a train to call after: Call when No 6 1442 is by. My colleagues on the BN Seattle Terminal job (verbal control like B&OCT and IHB), management, and a lot of the crews didn't like me for such practices as call me after......but there was oh so much to not like me for that I didn't care)

From my point of view, if the Director was not at fault, it was management that railroaded that way (my opinion of IC in the early 70s was pretty low because of dangerous practices that they promoted, leading to such as the wreck at 27th Street in 1972 and this one on the Belt 1968, in which an IC kept going straight when the railroad curved, and on and on and on and on).

TAW

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Englewood Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> (my opinion of IC in the early 70s was pretty low
> because of dangerous practices that they promoted,
> leading to such as the wreck at 27th Street in
> 1972 and this one on the Belt 1968, in which an IC
> kept going straight when the railroad curved, and
> on and on and on and on).
>
> TAW

Don't forget the head on at Indian Oaks and the rear ender on the
Calumet River bridge and........

Never heard about the one on the Belt. Where did that happen?

How was record keeping different or the same as was done by trainorder stations or tower operators?

Mark

I never visited the train director's office but he probably had a train sheet similar to
a train dispatcher's. That way he could record the passing times at various stations,
loading, crew on-duty time, etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/18 07:06 by Englewood.

My first exposure to a switch tender was watching the B&O at 79th St. when I was 15.
I remember seeing a new man there stop the Capitol Ltd. because he had the switches wrong.
No. 6 stopped at the signal and a crew member hung out the engineer's side door and pointed
at a switch. The switchtender had failed to line the far end of a crossover normal.

As a kid observer I did not understand all the nuances at the time but it was one of those experiences
that I was to understand better the more I learned about railroading. The kind of experiences that
are not available to young people today. Walking a mile and a half through the cold to watch a passenger
train go through the junction. I think it would beat sitting in a room playing train simulator.

I got hired toward the tail end of the era when railroads could hire young men interested in the railroad. The legal
climate changed and so did hiring practices. Any kid hired after spending time around the railroad on his own
would have soaking up all the knowledge he could and I doubt he would have thrown a switch in front of
an Amtrak train bearing down on him.

Englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Don't forget the head on at Indian Oaks and the
> rear ender on the
> Calumet River bridge and........


There were too many to remember in sufficient detail to cite them.

Was Indian Oaks the one in which the operator told the engineer who couldn't see enough in the fog to know where he was to keep coming, he was all lined up?

>
> Never heard about the one on the Belt. Where did
> that happen?

Something like fall of 68. The IC jobs to and from Clearing would regularly run 40 or so mph. They were, let's say encouraged to get over the road. This particular one was south and went by me at 75 doing at least 40. At Union Ave, the railroad turned toward 80 and the IC kept going straight.

TAW

Englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Walking
> a mile and a half through the cold to watch a
> passenger
> train go through the junction. I think it would
> beat sitting in a room playing train simulator.

For sure. We're the last generation to be able to learn real railroading in that way. The Soviet Union understood the need and had "Children's Railways," kind of a large scale version of a zoo railroad here. The kids could learn railroading by doing. The kids worked on track, signals, learned to run an engine, run an interlocking, etc. After high school, there was an opportunity to go to a full four year university program in railroading - the advanced detailed technical knowledge after acquiring extensive practical knowledge. Some of the children's railways continue to teach another generation and the university programs are still there.

You had railroad in the family, but today, even that wouldn't make any difference.


>
> I got hired toward the tail end of the era when
> railroads could hire young men interested in the
> railroad.


That's among the reasons that the industry is screwed up. Not only is the opportunity to learn gone, you don't get to work if you show any interest. Beside that, today's people off the street get training - the tasks and steps that are part of the job. Folks who learned like we (and there are many on trainorders) did got education, not training.




> The legal
> climate changed and so did hiring practices. Any
> kid hired after spending time around the railroad
> on his own
> would have soaking up all the knowledge he could
> and I doubt he would have thrown a switch in front
> of
> an Amtrak train bearing down on him.

Absolutely right. This is part of my railroading as second nature rant. Sure, there were lots of folks hired off the street, but generally, they were taught pretty thoroughly...until railroading was second nature. On the other hand there were also the folks who couldn't get it and never would: https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,2650213,2650213#msg-2650213. There seem to be even more of them now, made ok by the technology that makes it not as bad when they screw up.

I keep going back to the Director in that incident. I read the description and could hear Tony Franicich tell me No, never say that. You tell him exactly what you want done at the time you want it done.

TAW

Thanks for your response. I think I didn't ask my question very well, but what information was the switch tender supposed to record. I can see if he is getting instructions via radio when not in his shack that records would be difficult to maintain.

Thanks.


Englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I never visited the train director's office but he
> probably had a train sheet similar to
> a train dispatcher's. That way he could record
> the passing times at various stations,
> loading, crew on-duty time, etc.

Cumbres Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for your response. I think I didn't ask my
> question very well, but what information was the
> switch tender supposed to record. I can see if he
> is getting instructions via radio when not in his
> shack that records would be difficult to maintain.
>
>
> Thanks.


Good question. I don't know for sure. It may have just been the
oral instructions as a yardmaster would give to a switchman. The
instructions must be repeated but not required to be written
down.

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Was Indian Oaks the one in which the operator told
> the engineer who couldn't see enough in the fog to
> know where he was to keep coming, he was all lined
> up?
>
> >

1969 was a good year for the IC
follow the links to the DOT website. Click in the small Adobe icon at the bottom of the page

Indian Oaks: Head-on collision - 3 dead 45 injured
http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?db=DOT-RAILROAD&query=(select+3915)

McManus La.: Head-on collision - 4 dead 6 injured
http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?db=DOT-RAILROAD&query=(select+3916)

Glendora, Ms.: Derailment after 149 car train put in emergency. Derailment and explosion involving 8 cars of vinyl chloride
http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?db=DOT-RAILROAD&query=(select+3917)

Riverdale, Il.: Rear end collision - 3 dead 3 injured.
http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?db=DOT-RAILROAD&query=(select+3918)

That was real railroading'.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/18 10:59 by Englewood.

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> I keep going back to the Director in that
> incident. I read the description and could hear
> Tony Franicich tell me No, never say that. You
> tell him exactly what you want done at the time
> you want it done.
>
> TAW

On the Rock we were taught to tell them to call back after they see "xyz" go by.

Later, on other roads, we were taught in a more refined way: "Never grant verbal authority contingent on another movement."

Englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Later, on other roads, we were taught in a more refined way: "Never grant verbal authority
contingent on another movement."

This sentence has caused a lot of grief and heartache:

"Not in effect until after the arrival of ________ at ________."

Englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Indian Oaks: Head-on collision - 3 dead 45
> injured
> http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/Document?d
> b=DOT-RAILROAD&query=(select+3915)


That's the one. Just as I was industrial strength chagrined to come to work at Havre in 1979 and find that the same procedures that caused the Sheffels Meet in 1969 were still happening, when I went to work 3d trick at Centralia in 1977 and worked with the Tacoma office for the first time, I was industrial strength chagrined to find that standard practice in the Tacoma office included telling trains in heavy fog to keep coming, they were all lined up. Not only that, they were telling them approaching Centralia North that they were all lined up past Napavine South, five control points away.

I suggested that ATDA make accident reports involving train dispatchers mandatory (the mandatory came from the Chief on B&OCT) reading so we wouldn't keep doing the same wrong stuff over and over and over. That was, let's say, not well received.



TAW

Riverdale was the one where Ott Zimmerman used the "As I see it" page in the company magazine to drive home the importance of following the rules. If I remember correctly, he did not point fingers, he just stressed the issue of getting the job done safely. Different managers back then.

Englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Good question. I don't know for sure. It may have
> just been the
> oral instructions as a yardmaster would give to a
> switchman. The
> instructions must be repeated but not required to
> be written
> down.

That would be consistent with the B&OCT, IHB, and Belt operation. I imported that operation to the BN Seattle Terminal when the job was created. A decade later, the horrified rules department found out what we were doing and invented OCS and forms to fill out.

TAW